Bush lies are firm basis for impeachment

Does the president not read? Does his national security staff, led by Condoleezza Rice, keep him in the dark about the most pressing issues of the day? Or is this administration blatantly lying to the American people to secure its ideological ends?

Those questions arise because of the White House admission that the charge that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger was excised from a speech by President George W. Bush in October 2002 after the CIA and Department of State insisted it was unfounded. Bizarrely, however, three months later without any additional evidence emerging that outrageous lie was inserted into the State of the Union speech to justify the president’s case for bypassing the United Nations Security Council, for chasing U.N. inspectors out of Iraq and for invading and occupying an oil-rich country.

Two weekends ago, administration sources disclosed that CIA Director George Tenet intervened in October to warn White House officials, including deputy adviser Stephen Hadley, not to use the Niger information because it was based on a single source. That source proved to be a forged document with glaring inconsistencies.

Bush’s top security aides, led by Hadley’s boss, Rice, went along with the CIA, and Bush’s October speech was edited to eliminate the false charge that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium from Niger to create a nuclear weapon.

We now know that before Bush’s January speech, Robert Joseph, the National Security Council individual who reports to Rice on nuclear proliferation, was fully briefed by CIA analyst Alan Foley that the Niger connection was no stronger than it had been in October. It is inconceivable that in reviewing draft after draft of the State of the Union speech, NSC staffers Hadley and Joseph failed to tell Rice that Bush was about to spread a big lie to justify going to war.

On national security, the buck doesn’t stop with Tenet, the current fall guy. The buck stops with Bush and his national security adviser, who is charged with funneling intelligence data to the president. That included cluing in the president that the CIA’s concerns were backed by the state department’s conclusion that "the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are highly dubious."

For her part, Rice has tried to fend off controversy by claiming ignorance. On "Meet the Press" in June, Rice claimed, "We did not know at the time no one knew at the time, in our circles maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."

Rice recently admitted that she had known the state department intelligence unit "was the one that within the overall intelligence estimate had objected to that sentence" and that Secretary of State Colin Powell had refused to use the Niger document in his presentation to the United Nations because of what she described as longstanding concerns about its credibility. But Rice also knew the case for bypassing U.N. inspections and invading Iraq required demonstrating an imminent threat. The terrifying charge that Iraq was hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons would do the trick nicely.

However, with the discrediting of the Niger buy and the equally dubious citation of a purchase of aluminum tubes which turned out to be inappropriate for the production of enriched uranium one can imagine the disappointment at the White House. There was no evidence for painting Saddam Hussein as a nuclear threat.

The proper reaction should have been to support the U.N. inspectors in doing their work in an efficient and timely fashion. We now know, and perhaps the White House knew then, that the inspectors eventually would come up empty-handed because no weapons of mass destruction program existed not even a stray vial of chemical and biological weapons has been discovered. However, that would have obviated the administration’s key rationale for an invasion, so lies substituted for facts that didn’t exist.

And there, dear readers, exists the firm basis for bringing a charge of impeachment against the president who employed lies to lead us into war.

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This is from International Atomic Energy Agency December 27th, 2002

http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/nwp2.html

Fact Sheet: Iraq's Nuclear Weapon Programme

INVO's extensive inspection activities in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 resulted in a technically coherent picture of Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme. The programme was very well funded and was aimed at the indigenous development and exploitation of technologies for the production of weapons-grade nuclear material and production and manufacturing of nuclear weapons. IAEA report S/1997/779 to the UN Security Council provides a detailed overview of Agency activities in Iraq and its assessment of Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapon programme. An update and summary of this report can be found in S/1998/927 and S/1999/393. The reports cover all Agency activities in Iraq between 1991 and 1998.

This fact sheet is based upon these reports and highlights the components of Iraq's nuclear weapon programme, IAEA assessment of the past nuclear programme, and IAEA achivements.

I - Components of Iraq's nuclear weapon programme
	Acquisition of weapons usable material
	Indigenous production and overt procurement of uranium compounds Development of indigenous uranium enrichment capabilities Intended diversion of research reactor fuel Production and separation of plutonium
	Weaponisation
	Facilities Research & Development Nuclear delivery system
II - Assessment of Iraq's past nuclear programme
III - IAEA Achievements in Iraq

I - Components of Iraq's nuclear weapon programme

Acquisition of weapons usable material

Indigenous production and overt procurement of uranium compounds

Imported 4,006 kg of natural uranium and 6,005 kg of depleted uranium (DU) from Italy in 1979
Imported 1,767 kg low enriched uranium (LEU) from Italy in 1982
Imported almost 50 kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Russia and France
Procured 429 drums containing 138,098 kg yellowcake from Portugal in 1980
Procured 487 drums containing 148,348 kg yellowcake from Portugal in 1982
Procured 432 drums containing 137,435 kg of yellowcake from Niger in 1981
Procured 426 drums containing 139,409 kg of yellowcake from Niger in 1982
Imported 24,260 kg of uranium dioxide from Brazil between 1981-82
Produced 109 tonnes of uranium in 168 tonnes of yellowcake at Al Qaim uranium recovery plant, which was constructed between 1982-84
Produced 420 drums containing 99,457 kg uranium dioxide at Al Jesira uranium conversion facility

Produced UF6 at Rashdiya Engineering and Design Centre
Processed uranium dioxide to produce UF4, uranium metal and UF6 at Tuwaitha Chemical Laboratories
Processed UO2 and yellowcake to produce UO2, U3O8, UO3, UO4, UF4, and uranium metal at Tuwaitha Experimental Research Laboratory for Fuel Fabrication
Processed UO2 to produce UCl4 at Tuwaitha Chemical Engineering Research laboratories

Development of indigenous uranium enrichment capabilities

Electro-magnetic isotope separation (EMIS)

Designed and constructed electromagnets and different magnet separators systems between 1982-87 in Tuwaitha
Designed and constructed one R50 and three R100 separator systems starting from 1985 and operated them until 1991 in Tuwaitha
Designed and constructed R120 and R60 separator systems in Tarmiya
Produced 640 grams of enriched uranium with an average enrichment of 7.2%

Gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment

Initiated in 1982
Constructed related facilities at Tuwaitha and Rashdiya
Manufactured a barrier tube suitable for operation in UF6 in 1988

Gas centrifuge enrichment

Initiated in 1987
Built first oil centrifuge in 1987 and conducted laboratory trials; later shifted to magnetic bearing centrifuge
Developed a series of sub-critical centrifuge designs in 1989
Designed and assembled and tested magnetic centrifuges using a carbon composite rotor in 1990
Construction work for the mass production of centrifuges and a pilot-scale cascade hall at Al Furat began in 1989

R&D on chemical uranium enrichment also took place
In 1981, laser isotopic separation work began and studied both atomic (AVLIS) and molecular (MLIS) technologies

Intended diversion of research reactor fuel

Planned to divert highly enriched uranium, that was subjected to Agency safeguards, at Tuwaitha under a “crash programme” to use the material in the production of a nuclear weapon
Installed a chemical processing plant at Tuwaitha in about three months in 1990 to extract HEU from research reactor fuel
Had capability to commence the conversion of HEU from UNH to metal in 1991

Production and separation of plutonium

Reactor design did not go beyond theoretical studies
Used IRT-5000 to irradiate three indigenously fabricated natural uranium fuel elements
Separated five grams of plutonium at laboratory-scale process line in Tuwaitha

Weaponisation

Facilities

Tuwaitha had facilities and infrastructure for all Group Four activities except for the fabrication, handling, and testing of high explosives
Experimented with high explosives to produce implosive shock waves
Developed a 32-point electronic firing system using detonators and lenses developed at Al Qa Qa
Tested firing system
Tested flash X-ray systems, gas gun systems, fiber optics with fast response electronic equipment, high speed electronic streak cameras towards nuclear weapons
Produced and recovered polonium by irradiating bismuth

Research & Development

Created special unit at Al Qaqaa for the production of high explosive lenses, detonators and propellants for nuclear weapons
Compiled large stocks of imported HMX and RDX and own operating RDX production plant
Al Atheer designed to accommodate all technical activities related to nuclear weapon development, including experiments with high explosives for which an elaborate complex was designed and constructed
Iraq’s primary focus was a basic implosion fission design, fuelled by HEU
Using open-source literature and theoretical studies, ran various computer codes through Iraq’s mainframe computer to adapt the codes and develop the physical constants for a nuclear weapon development programme
Was aware of more advanced weapon design concepts
Invested significant efforts to understand the various options for neutron initiators
Tested high explosivelenses
Made significant progress in developing capabilities for the production, casting and machining of uranium metal
Casted a uranium sphere of about five centimeter diameter, several hemispheres of similar size and a small number of rods weighing 1.2 kg per piece, from which to machine “sub-calibre munitions”

Nuclear Delivery System

Considered two options:

Production of a derivative of the Al Hussein/Al Abbas missile, designed to deliver a one-tonne warhead to a maximum range of 650 km
Using an unmodified Al Hussein missile with a range of 300 km

II - Assessment of Iraq's past nuclear programme

As of 16 December 1998, the following assessment could be made of Iraq's clandestine programme:

There were no indications to suggest that Iraq was successful in its attempt to produce nuclear weapons. Iraq's explanation of its progress towards the finalisation of a workable design for its nuclear weapons was considered to be consistent with the resources and time scale indicated by the available programme documentation.
Iraq was at, or close to, the threshold of success in such areas as the production of HEU through the EMIS process, the production and pilot cascading of single-cylinder sub-critical gas centrifuge machines, and the fabrication of the explosive package for a nuclear weapon
There were no indications to suggest that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapons-grade nuclear material through its indigenous processes.
There were no indications that Iraq otherwise clandestinely acquired weapons-usable material
All the safeguarded research reactor fuel was verified and fully accounted for by the IAEA and removed from Iraq.
There were no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material of any practical significance.

III - IAEA Achievements in Iraq

IRAQ	IAEA
Procurement and production of uranium compounds	Removed all known weapon usable materials All known indigenous facilities capable of producing uranium compounds useful to a nuclear programme were destroyed during the Gulf War; IAEA inspected and completed the destruction of facilities; IAEA monitored the sites as part of their OMV activities. Took custody of all known imported compounds and indigenously produced uranium compounds
Industrial-scale facilities for the production of uranium compounds suitable for fuel fabrication or isotopic enrichment	All known indigenous facilities capable of producing uranium compounds useful for fuel fabrication and for isotopic enrichment were destroyed during the Gulf War; IAEA inspected and completed the destruction of facilities; IAEA monitored the sites as part of their OMV activities.
R&D of indigenous uranium enrichment technologies	Destroyed, removed, or rendered harmless all known single-use equipment used in enrichment R&D Destroyed all known facilities and equipment for the enrichment of uranium Subjected to ongoing monitoring and verification all facilities and known dual-use equipment capable of being used in enrichment R&D
Design and feasibility studies for an indigenous plutonium production reactor	Inspections revealed no indication that Iraq's plan for an indigenous plutonium production reactor proceeded beyond feasibility study.
R&D of irradiated fuel reprocessing technology	The relevant facilities at Tuwaitha used for irradiated fuel reprocessing R&D were destroyed during the Gulf War
R&D of weaponisation capabilities for implosion-based nuclear weapons	Destroyed the principal buildings of Al Atheer nuclear weapons development and production plant. Destroyed, removed, or rendered harmless all known purpose-specific equipment
A "crash programme" aimed at diverting safeguarded research reactor fuel and recovering the HEU for use in a nuclear weapon	The chemical processing plant was destroyed during the Gulf War; IAEA monitored sites with relevant capabilities as part of their OMV activities. Verified, accounted for, and recovered the entire inventory of research reactor fuel Arranged for removal of all HEU fuel from Iraq

27 December 2002, IAEA

Robert Scheer's Canard-o-Matic

by Stefan Sharkansky May 21, 2003

Columnist Robert Scheer's columns about Iraq all started to sound the same after a while, so I did an exhaustive analysis of his columns from the first few months of the year, and confirmed that they simply recycle through the same old canards. It's almost as if Scheer has a machine that spits out random combinations of canards each week. The table shows which canards were used in which day's column. Each canard is defined below. The archive of Scheer's columns is here

Canard

Apr.

Mar.

Feb.

Jan.

Alienating our allies

Big Lie

Criminal

Cultural Simpletons

Defense Contractors

Dissent is Treason

Distraction

Empire

Fear of Truth

Handpicked Leaders

Illegitimate President

Imminent Threat

Inspections Working

Liberation

Mission from God

Moral Equivalence

More Terrorism

Nation Building

Neocon Clique

Not a Threat

Oil

Osama Hates Saddam

Our Friend Saddam

Palestine

Pyongyang

Redraw the Map

Rush To War

Saddam not so bad

September 11

Unilateral

United Nations

Vietnam

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Canards defined, along with an illustrative quote:

Canard	Definition and Quote
Alienating our allies	Our allies -- France, Germany and Russia -- are opposed to the war out of principle (not out of, say, commercial interest). We should listen to them because they know more than we do. It is Bush's fault for alienating them. ("Unfortunately, this narrow intolerance for debate has been exemplified by our president, whose vituperative attacks on longtime democratic allies such as France and Germany set a new low for American diplomacy. " - Apr. 8)
Big Lie	The only way that Bush can persuade the American people to support the overthrow of Saddam is to engage in "Big Lie" deceptions, ala Goebbels. ("...in his chaotic two-year presidency, Bush has pushed the Big Lie approach so far that we are seeing dramatic signs of its cracking..." - Mar. 4)
Criminal	Bush is a criminal and should be convicted of war crimes, and/or impeached ("The maiming or killing of a single Iraqi civilian in an attack by the United States would constitute a war crime" - Mar. 11)
Cultural Simpletons	Bush and his administration are simpletons who don't understand other cultures. ("The president, who seems to pride himself on knowing more about the mores of Midland, Texas, than about the rest of the world's complex cultures, has bought this cabal's naive and dangerous plan for a Pax Americana. " - Mar. 25)
Defense Contractors	The real reason for the war was to enrich Bush's supporters in the defense industry. ("Eager to rebuild their country after years of misrule, will Iraqis really swallow the shameless plans of Bush insiders to privatize Iraqi oil while the administration awards billions of dollars in contracts to U.S. companies? " - Apr. 15)
Dissent is Treason	Anybody who questions the war is branded as unpatriotic or a traitor ("This and other glaring contradictions have been obscured by yammering talk-show yahoos who have been attempting to equate dissent with treason and capitulation." - Apr. 8)
Distraction	The real reason for the war was to distract the country from the country's economic problems, all of which are Bush's fault, including the implosion of the dot-com bubble, [which happened while Clinton was President] ("Now that the war has been won, is it permissible to suggest that our emperor has no clothes? I'm not referring to his abysmal stewardship of the economy but rather the fig-leaf war he donned to cover up his glaring domestic failures." - Apr. 22)
Empire	The real reason for the war is for the United States to create an empire and to invent some colonies to rule.("Whether this war is short or long, extremely bloody or just bloody, the stark fact is that a barely elected president has made the United States the first colonizer of the 21st century..." - Mar 18)
Fear of Truth	Bush is afraid of revealing the truth about Saddam, which is that he's not so bad after all. ("So why, considering all this good news, is the White House afraid to allow the inspections to continue? Is Bush worried that the weapons may not exist and that his real goal, stated blatantly in his last press conference, of taking over Iraq might be undermined? " - Mar. 11)
Handpicked Leaders	The Bush administration has "handpicked" certain Iraqis (like Ahmad Chalabi) to be our puppets to run Iraq ("And while we like Iraq's Kurds and Shiites now, they'd best be advised to cash in before the next immunity challenge, when they could be on the short end of the stick of whatever malleable Iraqi general we handpick to run our new oil fields." - Feb. 25).
Illegitimate President	Bush is not a legitimate president. ("... a small coterie of neoconservative ideologues plotting to remake the world in their image and who unfortunately have the ear of our accidental president." - Mar. 11)
Imminent Threat	Bush lied to the country by saying that Saddam was an "imminent threat" to the United States [ he never said this ] ("Yet neither the awesome display of U.S. military power or the slew of false justifications used to unleash it -- the imminent threat of Iraq's use of weapons of mass destruction, now likely to be proved nonexistent ..." - Apr. 15)
Inspections Working	The United Nations weapons inspections were working all along, they only needed more time. ("...the recent report of the U.N. inspectors has made indelibly clear that disarmament is working ..." - Mar. 11)
Liberation	The people of Iraq will not enjoy any more freedom without Saddam than they had with him, so the words "liberate" and "liberation" must always be written with "sneer quotes". ("To this end, we are on a mission to "liberate" the people of Iraq from a cruel dictator..." - Apr. 1)
Mission from God	The real reason for the war was because Bush is driven to do so by his Christian faith and his believes that he was acting out God's will ("Bush's belief -- according to his close friend, Commerce Secretary Don Evans -- that God has called him to wage war on Iraq leaves little room for legitimate argument." - Apr. 8) [the closest quote from Evans I can find says "Bush believes he was called by God to lead the nation at this time", which is somewhat different from what Scheer wrote]
Moral Equivalence	The United States is morally equivalent to Iraq. The United States isn't perfect, so Saddam should be allowed to get away with anything he wants. And if we have nuclear weapons, why shouldn't Saddam have them too? ("The United States, which unleashed the nuclear monster and is still the only nation to have used this deadliest weapon of mass destruction against innocent civilians, should also understand why other nations want one." - Jan 2)
More Terrorism	Removing Saddam from power is certain to cause more Islamic terrorism against Americans. ("Worst of all, we're giving Al Qaeda exactly what it wants: the overthrow of Hussein's government, what Osama bin Laden called in his latest tape an "infidel regime" run by apostates, and the best recruiting poster he could hope for." - Feb. 18)
Nation Building	In the 2000 campaign, Bush rejected the notion that the US should be in the business of "national building" [which is true], but because of this, it is somehow illegitimate for the President to have learned that rebuilding failed states is sometimes necessary for US interests. ("...unable to produce any real evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the invasion or since it began, the administration publicly shifted its rationale from disarmament to the "nation-building" that Bush properly derided during the 2000 election." - Mar 25)
Neocon Clique	U.S. foreign policy has been hijacked by a cabal of neo-conservative "chickenhawks" ("This was especially convenient for a powerful clique of White House "chicken hawks" -- so called because they are quick to support war but managed to avoid service themselves -- who were eager to dust off a decade-old plan to seize Iraq as the first step in redrawing the map of the Middle East and, incidentally, gaining control of its oil. " -- Feb. 11)
Not a Threat	Saddam had been so neutered by sanctions that he was never any kind of a threat to anybody. ("...our vaunted intelligence forces knew well ... that Iraq had been reduced by two decades of wars, sanctions and arms inspections to a paper tiger..." - Apr. 22)
Oil	The real reason for the war was to steal Iraq's oil ("Some U.S.-based corporations will make out like bandits in a post-occupation Iraq, as a Western power again attempts to bring enlightenment to the region while ripping off its oil." - Jan. 7)
Osama Hates Saddam	Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda hate Saddam because he is a secularist. They would never, ever co-operate with him, even against the United States. ("Hussein, himself evil in so many ways, is the secular apostate to the Islamic fundamentalist nuts that are behind our terror fears; that is precisely why the U.S. backed Iraq, nasty weapons and all, in its devastating war with fundamentalist Iran. " -- Feb. 11)
Our Friend Saddam	Scheer spins the 1980s alliance of convenience with Saddam as a counterweight to Khomeini as a sort of close friendship where the US supported Saddam and kept him in power, as if the US was the only country which had any dealings with him and as if, say, France, Germany and Russia did not. Furthemore, because the US dealt with Saddam 15-20 years ago, it would be somehow wrong for us to take responsibility for the consequences and to remove him. ("Why have the media bought the administration's propaganda that we come to Iraq with clean hands and virgin swords to slay the dragon of Saddam Hussein, when the U.S. did so much to keep him in power?" - Apr. 15)
Palestine	Bush's "inattention to the problem" is responsible for the plight of the Palestinians, and not, say, Hamas' unwillingness to stop murdering civilians. ("The administration's indifference to the now completely out-of-control Israeli-Palestinian war is pouring oil on the fire of Muslim extremism." - Jan. 28)
Pyongyang	North Korea is a bigger threat to US national security than Iraq is, so instead of removing Saddam, Bush should have removed US forces from the Persian Gulf and capitulated to Kim Jong Il's demands. ("Washington's foreign policy is now less logical than Pyongyang's. A starving dictatorship's clumsy blackmail attempts at least make some twisted sense in that the Bush administration has refused, from its very first days, to even discuss North Korea's persistent request for a nonaggression pact with the United States." - Jan. 2)
Redraw the Map	The goal of the "Neocon Clique" (see above) is to "redraw the map of the Middle East". Presumably that means annexing Saudi Arabia to Bahrain or moving the Persian Gulf to Libya, or something like that. ("...there is ample evidence that "regime change" and redrawing the map of the Mideast were the goals of the Bush administration's neoconservative core all along." - Mar. 25)
Rush To War	Being patient through twelve years of sanctions, a dozen and a half ineffective UN Security Council resolutions, years of failed weapons inspections, and the slow torture of the Iraqi populace is a "rush to war". ("George W. Bush lied when he claimed to be worried about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Otherwise, Iraq's stepped-up cooperation with the U.N. on disarmament would be stunningly good news, obviating the need to rush to war." - Mar. 4)
Saddam not so bad	Saddam is not such a bad guy, after all. ("The Azores gang apparently realizes that if it doesn't start dropping bombs now, a peaceful solution to the crisis might actually be found. In this coming war, Hussein, as loathsome as he is, is not the aggressor -- we are." -- Mar. 18)
September 11	Bush has been telling the American people that Saddam was responsible for the September 11 attacks. [he hasn't] It would otherwise be impossible to persuade the American public that there were valid reasons for removing Saddam from power. See "Big Lie", above. ("George W. Bush can at least claim a slim majority at home in support of his war after selling frightened Americans the big lie that Iraq is connected to 9/11." - Mar. 18)
Unilateral	The "rush to war" (see above) was unilateral and all because Bush "alienated our allies" (see above). The only country which is our ally is Britain. [e.g. Kuwait, whose populace favored the war, and which served as a base for the invasion, apparently doesn't count] ("...unless Hussein ... suddenly unzips his skin to reveal he is actually Bin Laden, we are likely to march to war with the support of an "international coalition" that amounts to a fig leaf named Tony Blair and a motley collection of nations one can buy on eBay" - Jan. 28)
United Nations	The United Nations is the ultimate repository for all moral authority and political legitimacy in the world. Bush is wrong to try to hold the United Nations to a higher standard than the one to which the UN holds itself. ("If Iraq needs a foreign midwife to assist in its rebirth it should be under the broader sponsorship of the United Nations Security Council, which our macho president continues to disparage for having failed to vote our way." - Apr. 15)
Vietnam	Of all the conflicts in recorded history, the Vietnam War provides the most relevant lessons for the situation in Iraq. ("As Powell knows from his Vietnam experience, lies have a way of catching up with you. Years from now, if the U.S. is still spending billions trying to micromanage the Middle East and reaping its rewards in blood, Bush will be marked indelibly, like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon before him, as a leader who went to war on a lie" - Feb. 4)
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