Bob Woodward: Bush Didn't Lie

RUSH: The Republican presidential candidates are being hit with, "Well, knowing what you know now, would you go back into Iraq?" And they've mostly accepted the premise that Iraq was a big boondoggle, a huge mistake, Bush lied, we shouldn't have done it, and they're answering on that basis.

Well, on Fox News Sunday, which I didn't see, during the group panel discussion, Chris Wallace speaking with Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, Wallace said, "The politics of Iraq have gotten a lot of attention the last couple of weeks with Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, bunch of others, and these questions of was it a mistake to go in 2003, was it a mistake to get out in 2011, what impact this could all have on the Republican race, the Democrat race. Bob Woodward, I know you want to talk about it because you've written a lot and you've reported extensively on this. What do you say about it?"

WOODWARD: There's a kind of line going along that Bush and the other people lied about this. I spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq. Lots of mistakes, but it was Bush telling George Tenet, the CIA director, don't let anyone stretch the case on WMD, and he was the one who was skeptical. A mistake certainly can be argued and there's an abundance of evidence, but there was no lie in this, that I could find.

RUSH: See how easy that is? See? Bob Woodward, the sane member of Woodward and Bernstein, says there wasn't any lie. He looked into this. And, by the way, the Democrats, don't forget, all signed on to this. Twice the Democrats in the Senate signed onto this, the use of force agreement. And it took Bush, Woodward says 18 months, it took Bush almost a year of going all over this country making speeches, building the case, United Nations and all that. And at no time during any of that did anybody accuse Bush of lying at that point. Only after the fact when it became a political football, but there's Bob Woodward: Hey, Bush did not lie. That's not at all what happened here. Case closed, that's it.

RUSH: Now, back to Bob Woodward. One more sound bite, Fox News Sunday. After Woodward claimed (paraphrasing), "Hey, I looked into this. I wrote a book about this. There might have been mistakes made in the Iraq war, but Bush did not lie about anything." Chris Wallace said, "What about 2011 and Obama's decision to pull all the troops out? There had been the Status of Forces Agreement between Bush and the Iraqi government that provided for a follow-on force. The Pentagon was talking about somewhere between 10 and 20,000. A lot of people think Obama didn't really want to keep any troops there."

WOODWARD: Look, Obama does not like war, but as you look back on this, the argument from the military was, let's keep, 10, 15,000 troops there as an insurance policy, and we all know insurance companies make sense. When you're a superpower you have to buy these insurance policies, and he didn't in this case. I don't think you can say everything is because of that decision, but clearly a factor.

RUSH: All right, I have to tell you, folks, do you realize how tough it probably was for Bob Woodward to admit both of these things? That, A, Bush didn't lie. And then in the second sound bite essentially saying that the loss of Iraq is Obama's fault? Now, that has to be a tough thing for Bob Woodward to say, because Obama's his guy. No doubt voted for him, invested a lot of hope in him. But it's clear. Obama lost Iraq by refusing to keep a follow-on force and he went out and claimed victory for it, but he wanted no part of any remaining force.

He'd been promising his insane base he was gonna close Gitmo, get us out of Iraq, get us out of Afghanistan, and make sure the United States took it in the shorts everywhere possible, as we deserved. And so he calls it an insurance policy. We all know insurance policies make sense.

RUSH: Bill in Macon, Georgia, you're next. Glad you waited. Welcome to the program, sir.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Hey, Rush, two quick points. One, we did not go to war in Iraq over weapons of mass destruction. We went to war over the lack of weapons inspectors being able to do their jobs. And number two, contrary to a caller last week you had, even if George Bush had decided to, quote, unquote, not invade Iraq, the next day he still had the problems with what do I do with the sanctions, what do I do with the no fly zones. So when I hear Chris Wallace ask that simple question about "If you'd have known now what you'd have known then," it's like they're ignoring 12, 13 years of history.

RUSH: Well, obviously, because the purpose of the question is to "gotcha." I mean, the question's a setup. I mean, knowing what you know now, would you have encouraged and helped Obama pass Obamacare? Knowing what you know now, we could do this with any politician for anything at any time they served. This is time for the Republicans running for the presidency and important in this is to not accept the premise of the question, which that Iraq was a mistake. And the answer you gave would be a great way of doing it.

The premise is that Bush lied, that he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, that the intelligence told him there was no WMD, but that Cheney convinced Bush to do it anyway. And that's the premise under which these questions are being asked. And some of these Republicans are so shell-shocked and afraid of the media, they're accepting the premise and then any answer they give is a trap. Whereas the correct answer would be not to accept the premise and turn it around and say, "Well, knowing what we know now, if we're gonna have a Democrat Party that would have done everything to sabotage the war and a forthcoming Democrat president would get us out of there prematurely, no, I might not have gone into Iraq if I'd have known Barack Obama was gonna be elected."

What an answer that would have been. "If I'd have known Barack Obama was gonna be president no way would I have gone into Iraq because I couldn't guarantee that our success would be maintained." Just as simple as that. Or use what you said. "What do you mean, knowing what we now know? Do you know why we went to Iraq?" Just put it back on the reporter. "Well, I'm the one asking the questions, not answering."

"No. He was not permitting weapons inspectors. There were 14 different UN resolutions he was in violation. That's why there was such a grand, huge coalition, the world united against the guy. He rolled the dice that what happened to him would never happen. He was all bluster. He was trying to look big in the eyes of the mullahs in Iran, and he wanted to be thought of as the big guy in the Middle East to take on the evil US. So he was lying about all this stuff. Of course, he did use mustard gas on his own people, the Kurds, so he had done it before."

But there's any number of ways of answering that question. And your way is an excellent one, too. Is to just get 'em off this notion of weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq imported large quantities of raw materials and components required for the manufacture of centrifuges to produce enriched uranium, sufficient to produce a few thousand centrifuges. The main items included: special aluminum alloy extrusions for the manufacture of centrifuge vacuum housings; ferrite magnets and other components used in the stator of centrifuge motors; and special equipment needed to fix the stator components in place. Iraq also obtained: 100 tons of special high strength steel (maraging steel) for centrifuge rotors and rotor fittings; and several thousand aluminum forgings for vacuum housing flanges. The quantities involved would have sufficed for the manufacture of several thousand centrifuges. Iraq's centrifuge enrichment program had not progressed to a point where they could have started a sizeable production of centrifuges, although given time, they would have been successful. The program had developed to a point, however, where the material necessary for certain key components had been identified. This enabled the procurement of materials as opportunities became available even though the centrifuge design had not been completely finalized nor the manufacturing process fully implemented. The operation of a production scale uranium-enrichment centrifuge cascade, given the state of Iraqi centrifuge technology when work stopped, would have required the foreign procurement of large numbers of finished components. Iraq was constructing a facility deemed by experts as being capable of producing a few thousand centrifuge machines a year. [IAEA April 1992]

You didn't read my link.

Well let’s take a close look at what’s actually found at your link. For reference anything below 20% U235 is low enriched uranium. Bomb grade HEU is 85% u 235 or greater.

Electromagnetic Isotope Separation (EMIS):

“According to Iraq’s declarations to U.N. inspectors, it managed to produce 640 grams of enriched uranium with an average enrichment of 7.2% at Tuwaitha and some 685 grams at an average enrichment of 3% at Al Tarmiya.”

Centrifuges:

“Iraq also attempted to enrich uranium with high-speed centrifuges. This effort had lower priority than the EMIS program.”

Everything listed under centrifuges is what Iraq ‘planned’ to do other than 1.9 kilogram they produced in 1990.

Laser Isotopic Separation (LIS):

“In May 1994 the IAEA received information indicating that Iraq had pursued laser uranium enrichment through both molecular and atomic vapor isotope separation. But the IAEA did not believe Iraq had made substantial progress in either. The IAEA had no evidence that these efforts achieved any isotopic separation, or that Iraq had developed even the most rudimentary capabilities. “

” Iraq’s AVLIS experiments in 1986 and 1989 were inconclusive, however, and Iraq claimed that further work was abandoned due to these failures and the low priority given to the laser program.”

Chemical and Ion-Exchange Separation:

” The reason for chemical enrichment was to provide feedstock for the EMIS separators, so they could begin with low enriched uranium instead of natural uranium, thereby boosting efficiency.”

“According to Iraq, the most promising project, though still at the conceptual design stage in late 1990, combined both enrichment methods in a hybrid process having a solvent extraction first stage and an ion exchange output stage, in order to produce up to 5 metric tons per year of 4 to 8% enriched uranium.”

Gaseous Diffusion:

“However, according to an Iraqi scientist, this activity, which was carried out in 1989, had not progressed beyond the qualification of a single barrier. In parallel to the barrier studies, Group I attempted to reverse-engineer compressors, in cooperation with Iraq’s Specialized Institute for Engineering Industries, but Iraq claimed that this attempt was not successful. According to Iraq, all activities related to gaseous diffusion ended in 1989 and priority was given instead to gas centrifuge enrichment. According to the former director of Iraq’s nuclear weapon program, Khidir Hamza, however, the Iraqis perfected the diffusion barrier in 1993, under the noses of the inspectors. Dr. Hamza believes that diffusion is the most likely path a reconstituted Iraqi nuclear program would take in order to enrich uranium for its bombs.
“

There’s no record of them having produced any enriched uranium via gaseous diffusion if they even managed to get it to work.

Diversion of Reactor Fuel:

“After its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Iraq intended to illegally divert to bomb-making a quantity of highly enriched uranium that was being inspected by the IAEA. The HEU was contained in the fuel of Iraq’s two research reactors at Tuwaitha. Iraq had at its disposal some 41 kg of U-235 in its supply of research reactor fuel from Russia and France. The effort to divert that fuel, known as Project 601, started shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. By December 1990, a chemical processing plant had been installed in the LAMA building at Tuwaitha which Iraq hoped would make available 26 kg of HEU within 2-3 months. The building was severely damaged, however, in the Gulf war, and plans were made to move a scaled-down project to Tarmiya. The IAEA’s decision to remove the reactor fuel, starting in November 1991, meant the end of the crash program.”

At least in this instance there actually is a record of highly enriched uranium. Of course Iraq had gotten it from French and Russian reactors and hadn’t made it themselves.

Plutonium Separation:

“Because the plutonium isotope 239, which is used to fuel fission bombs, exists naturally only in trace amounts, it is necessary to manufacture plutonium in a nuclear reactor. This is done by bombarding U-238 with slow neutrons. When the U-238 captures a neutron, the U-239 isotope is produced, which decays into plutonium 239.

Iraq used its Russian-supplied IRT-5000 research reactor to irradiate (noncontinuously - to avoid detection during IAEA inspections) three U-238 fuel elements manufactured from December 1988 to February 1989 at Iraq’s Experimental Fuel Fabrication Research Laboratory (known as ERFFL or EFFRL). Iraq also irradiated one element for 22 days between February and April 1989, and two additional elements for 50 days between September 1989 and January 1990. “

And the amount of Plutonium produced was?

Weaponization:

“In 1995, Iraq admitted to the IAEA that it had considered several implosion-type bomb designs”

“Iraq also admitted studying several approaches to building a neutron initiator, which supplies the neutrons necessary to set off a nuclear chain reaction. Iraq produced and recovered tritium by irradiating lithium, and produced and recovered polonium by irradiating bismuth. “

” In fact, the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy helped train three Iraqi scientists from Al Qaqaa at a quadrennial international detonation conference in Portland, Oregon, where nuclear weapon detonation technology and flyer plate technology were presented. The latter is used to control the force and shape of implosive shock waves.”

oops.

“Iraq mastered the key technique of creating an implosive shock wave, which squeezes a bomb’s nuclear material enough to trigger a chain reaction. The smaller Iraqi design also used a “flying tamper,” a refinement that “hammers” the nuclear material to squeeze it even harder, so that bombs can be made smaller without diminishing their explosive force. The inspectors determined that Iraq had managed to develop a successful bomb design and lacked only the fissile material to fuel it.”

“Lacked only the fissile material fuel it”

Well how could they lack fissile material if they were cranking out U 235 via all the techniques listed above from the site you linked to?

Well they lacked the highly enriched U 235 because they hadn’t managed to make any despite fiddling around with it for years. Unlike Pakistan and North Korea, which actually do have bombs.

Well why don’t we compare your link to the CIA’s analysis of the Iraq Survey Group report:

https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/chap4.html#sect1

“Key Findings”

“Iraq Survey Group (ISG) discovered further evidence of the maturity and significance of the pre-1991 Iraqi Nuclear Program but found that Iraq’s ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after that date.

“Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.

“Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years. “

” As with other WMD areas, Saddam’s ambitions in the nuclear area were secondary to his prime objective of ending UN sanctions.

“Iraq, especially after the defection of Husayn Kamil in 1995, sought to persuade the IAEA that Iraq had met the UN’s disarmament requirements so sanctions would be lifted”

” ISG found a limited number of post-1995 activities that would have aided the reconstitution of the nuclear weapons program once sanctions were lifted.

“The activities of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission sustained some talent and limited research with potential relevance to a reconstituted nuclear program.

“Specific projects, with significant development, such as the efforts to build a rail gun and a copper vapor laser could have been useful in a future effort to restart a nuclear weapons program, but ISG found no indications of such purpose. As funding for the MIC and the IAEC increased after the introduction of the Oil-for-Food program, there was some growth in programs that involved former nuclear weapons scientists and engineers.

“The Regime prevented scientists from the former nuclear weapons program from leaving either their jobs or Iraq. Moreover, in the late 1990s, personnel from both MIC and the IAEC received significant pay raises in a bid to retain them, and the Regime undertook new investments in university research in a bid to ensure that Iraq retained technical knowledge

“Miscalculation (2002-2003)

“In the year prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), MIC undertook improvements to technology in several areas that could have been applied to a renewed centrifuge program for uranium enrichment. These dual-use technologies included projects to acquire a magnet production line at Al Tahadi, carbon fiber filament winding equipment for missile fabrication at al Karama, and the creation of a new Department of Rotating Machinery at Ibn Yunis. All of these projects were created to improve specific military or commercial products, but the technologies could have help support a centrifuge development project. ISG, however, has uncovered no indication that Iraq had resumed fissile material or nuclear weapon research and development activities since 1991.

” Results of ISG’s Investigation on Nuclear Issues

“Iraq did not possess a nuclear device, nor had it tried to reconstitute a capability to produce nuclear weapons after 1991.

“ISG has uncovered no information to support allegations of Iraqi pursuit of uranium from abroad in the post-Operation Desert Storm era.

“Iraq did not reconstitute its indigenous ability to produce yellowcake. As a result of Desert Storm and IAEA inspection efforts, Iraq’s indigenous yellowcake production capability appears to have been eliminated.

“Post-1991, Iraq had neither rebuilt any capability to convert uranium ore into a form suitable for enrichment nor reestablished other chemical processes related to handling fissile material for a weapons program

“Available evidence leads ISG to judge that Iraq’s development of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment essentially ended in 1991.

“ISG also judges that Iraq continued work on none of the many other uranium enrichment programs explored or developed prior to 1991, such as EMIS or lasers.

“It does not appear that Iraq took steps to advance its pre-1991 work in nuclear weapons design and development.

“ISG has uncovered two instances in which scientists linked to Iraq’s pre-1991 uranium enrichment programs kept documentation and technology in anticipation of renewing these efforts—actions that they contend were officially sanctioned.

“Furthermore, although all of the officials interviewed by ISG indicated Iraq had ended its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 1991, some suggested Saddam remained interested in reconstitution of the nuclear program after sanctions were lifted.

And what did Condi Rice say in that article?

Citing Bush administration officials, The New York Times reported Sunday that Iraq tried to buy thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes.
The tubes, Rice said, "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs."
Rice acknowledged that "there will always be some uncertainty" in determining how close Iraq may be to obtaining a nuclear weapon but said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Even an idiot can tell that she's making the case that Saddam had a serious nuclear weapons program.

So what did Dick Cheney say?

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Vice President Dick Cheney accused Saddam of moving aggressively to develop nuclear weapons over the past 14 months to add to his stockpile of chemical and biological arms.
"Increasingly, we believe that the United States may well become the target of those activities," Cheney said.
"And what we've seen recently that has raised our level of concern to the current state of unrest ... is that he now is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium -- specifically, aluminum tubes," Cheney said, referring to one of the elements for making nuclear weapons.

I'm sure even a moron like you can tell what he said there. Well, maybe not but thanks for making my point for me.

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