Bush Bullshits His Way Through Press Conferences Like So Many Essays at Yale
On Tuesday Bush had a question and answer session that wasn’t in front of a carefully, hand-picked audience, nor were the questions pre-screened and tailored to spin the appearance into a meticulously planned PR event.
I realize it’s difficult to discern my sarcasm from my genuine thoughts here, but let there be no doubt when I tell you that appearances from Bush such as those today, free from scripts, planted press corps members, and hand-picked audience members are incredibly rare. Perhaps we ought to think about how this impacts our model for Democracy around the world, at least while we’re installing it forcibly, but hey, that's just me.
Non-scripted interactions with our President often prove valuable, because questions that need
asking are posed, and even more importantly, people can observe first hand the question-dodging, lying, and weaseling out of really important conversations.
During the real Q&A, Bush got a little flustered as he tried to justify the occupation of Iraq. One specific exchange, involving Bush and Helen Thomas occurred, and something completely expected happened.
Bush answered a question about the Iraq war by dropping S11-bombs (referring to Sept 11th) and spurting out the same exact falsehoods that kool-aid drinking Bush supporters still believe today – that Iraq, Sept 11th, and Al Qaeda are linked.
I've highlighted interesting pieces of the conversation below in red. Red is for the rage I feel when I read it.
I have a million and one problems with his answer, but here are the highlights.
- Everyone who has documented activities starting with the Project for a New American Century, on through every reporter who has covered this White House, will tell you this administration has been looking to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Read Bob Woodward's book. Listen to Paul O'Neil. Read the Downing Street memos. Many conservatives openly and proudly agree with our preoccupation with Iraq's invasion, so I’m not sure why Bush denied it the other day.
- I recognize that Bush was a C student at Yale, but I think since “The Redcoats are coming!” was exclaimed in the late 1700’s during the Revolutionary war, we pretty much knew that oceans didn’t protect us.
- Once again – despite repeated denials intentionally linking the two, Bush mentioned the attacks on September 11th 4 times in a question regarding Iraq in his first paragraph.
- Each time Helen Thomas tried to say that once again, he's got his geography confused and was answering questions about Afganistan rather than Iraq, she was cut off childishly by Bush.
- Bush flat out lied about Iraq providing a safe haven for Al Qaeda. They did no such thing, and everyone knows there is proof for this now. Al Qaeda had no training camps in Iraq before this war, none of the hijackers were Iraqi, Mohammed Atta never met with Iraqi officials, Saddam squashed any radical Islam in his country, and there are more Al Qaeda living near the Jersey shore than living in Iraq, at any time, throughout history, ever, period.
- Perhaps this one bothers me the most, because it's such a flat out lie. Saddam never denied inspectors in his country, nor did he ever remove the inspectors. The country that did remove the inspectors? The United States, just before we bombed their country. First when Clinton was president, and just before the invasion in 2003.
- We didn't "work with the world," (as my 10 year old cousin might phrase it as well) regarding this occupation. In face, this may be the most simultaneously protested war ever conducted by the United States with less world support than any other campaign we've ever waged. Sorry, Vietnam.
- The world is not safer after the removal of Saddam. Hell, IRAQ is not safer after the removal of Saddam. There have been more terrorist attacks in Asia and Europe since our invasion. More people have died in Iraq and around the world as a result of our invasion, since Saddam was overthrown.
Realizing the only person with balls in the press corps is a 200 year old 80 pound woman with way too much cheek makeup, Bush then tried to call on Jeff Gannon, and looked agitated when no one answered.
I realize it’s difficult to discern my sarcasm from my genuine thoughts here, but let there be no doubt when I tell you that appearances from Bush such as those today, free from scripts, planted press corps members, and hand-picked audience members are incredibly rare. Perhaps we ought to think about how this impacts our model for Democracy around the world, at least while we’re installing it forcibly, but hey, that's just me.
Non-scripted interactions with our President often prove valuable, because questions that need
asking are posed, and even more importantly, people can observe first hand the question-dodging, lying, and weaseling out of really important conversations.During the real Q&A, Bush got a little flustered as he tried to justify the occupation of Iraq. One specific exchange, involving Bush and Helen Thomas occurred, and something completely expected happened.
Bush answered a question about the Iraq war by dropping S11-bombs (referring to Sept 11th) and spurting out the same exact falsehoods that kool-aid drinking Bush supporters still believe today – that Iraq, Sept 11th, and Al Qaeda are linked.
I've highlighted interesting pieces of the conversation below in red. Red is for the rage I feel when I read it.
Helen Thomas: I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet -- your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth -- what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil -- quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?
Your President: I think your premise -- in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- is that -- I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect -- Hold on for a second, please. Excuse me, excuse me. No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true. My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We -- when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen.
You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life. And I'm never going to forget it. And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people. Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that's why I went into Iraq -- hold on for a second –
Helen Thomas: They didn't do anything to you, or to our country…
Your President: Look -- excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where al Qaeda trained –
Helen Thomas: I'm talking about Iraq –
Your President: Helen, excuse me. That's where -- Afghanistan provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where they trained. That's where they plotted. That's where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans. I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council; that's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences -- and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world.
And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.
I have a million and one problems with his answer, but here are the highlights.
- Everyone who has documented activities starting with the Project for a New American Century, on through every reporter who has covered this White House, will tell you this administration has been looking to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Read Bob Woodward's book. Listen to Paul O'Neil. Read the Downing Street memos. Many conservatives openly and proudly agree with our preoccupation with Iraq's invasion, so I’m not sure why Bush denied it the other day.
- I recognize that Bush was a C student at Yale, but I think since “The Redcoats are coming!” was exclaimed in the late 1700’s during the Revolutionary war, we pretty much knew that oceans didn’t protect us.
- Once again – despite repeated denials intentionally linking the two, Bush mentioned the attacks on September 11th 4 times in a question regarding Iraq in his first paragraph.
- Each time Helen Thomas tried to say that once again, he's got his geography confused and was answering questions about Afganistan rather than Iraq, she was cut off childishly by Bush.
- Bush flat out lied about Iraq providing a safe haven for Al Qaeda. They did no such thing, and everyone knows there is proof for this now. Al Qaeda had no training camps in Iraq before this war, none of the hijackers were Iraqi, Mohammed Atta never met with Iraqi officials, Saddam squashed any radical Islam in his country, and there are more Al Qaeda living near the Jersey shore than living in Iraq, at any time, throughout history, ever, period.
- Perhaps this one bothers me the most, because it's such a flat out lie. Saddam never denied inspectors in his country, nor did he ever remove the inspectors. The country that did remove the inspectors? The United States, just before we bombed their country. First when Clinton was president, and just before the invasion in 2003.
- We didn't "work with the world," (as my 10 year old cousin might phrase it as well) regarding this occupation. In face, this may be the most simultaneously protested war ever conducted by the United States with less world support than any other campaign we've ever waged. Sorry, Vietnam.
- The world is not safer after the removal of Saddam. Hell, IRAQ is not safer after the removal of Saddam. There have been more terrorist attacks in Asia and Europe since our invasion. More people have died in Iraq and around the world as a result of our invasion, since Saddam was overthrown.
Realizing the only person with balls in the press corps is a 200 year old 80 pound woman with way too much cheek makeup, Bush then tried to call on Jeff Gannon, and looked agitated when no one answered.
posted by Jeremy at 10:12 PM
31 Comments:
According to the Pentagon's definitive postmortem on the invasion, some of which was leaked to the New York Times, even many Iraqi generals were stunned to discover that Hussein didn't have WMD. Hussein practiced a strategy that one Republican Guard commander called "deterrence by doubt," in which he hoped to bluff the world into believing he had WMD in order to deter Iran and keep his rep as an Arab strongman with serious mojo.
And that's the point Thomas et al don't want to understand. For reasons that still baffle me, the WMD threat - never the sole reason to invade Iraq - not only became the only argument, it became a thoroughly legalistic one, as if foreign policy has rules of evidence and procedural due process. After 9/11, that kind of foreign policy by lawyers looked ridiculous, and rightly so.
The fact that Hussein turned out to be bluffing about WMD isn't a mark against Bush's decision. If you're a cop and a man pulls out a gun and points it at you, you're within your rights to shoot him, particularly if the man in question is a known criminal who's shot people before. If it turns out afterward that the gun wasn't loaded, that's not the cop's fault.
Hussein had a 30-year track record of pursuing WMD. He dealt with Islamic terrorists. The sanctions regime fell apart thanks to Iraqi bribery and 30 years of spineless U.N. accommodation.
In the 1990s, Hussein tried to kill a former U.S. president and tried to shoot down British and American planes enforcing the "no-fly" zone. The Clinton administration - not the George W. Bush administration - established "regime change" as our policy toward Iraq. In the years that followed, the Iraqi regime openly celebrated the 9/11 attack. And when we tried to get Hussein to come clean about a weapons program that we (and his own generals!) had every reason to believe existed, he played games. After 9/11, calling that bluff wasn't a "choice," it was an obligation.
One reason Bush is down in the polls is that he's giving the impression that he's trying to change the subject from "our mistaken invasion" to "building democracy in Iraq." Building democracy in Iraq is vital - and entirely consistent with the highest aspirations of liberal foreign policy. But he would serve himself and the county better if he simply explained that he's been right all along. Swatting Helen Thomas is a start, but it will take a lot more.
Oh yes, the documents. One shows that an official from Iraq's government met with Osama bin Laden on Feb. 19, 1995, with the explicit permission of Saddam Hussein. When bin Laden was forced to leave Sudan, the Iraqi documents contain a handwritten note saying, "The relationship with him is still through the Sudanese. We're currently working on activating this relationship through a new channel in light of his current location" (Afghanistan). The notes also reveal that Osama bin Laden suggested "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia.
The documents further disclose that the Iraqi intelligence service issued detailed instructions to directors and managers of weapons sites regarding UN inspections. They were to remove files from computers, "remove correspondence with the atomic energy and military industry departments concerning the prohibited weapons" and "remove prohibited materials and equipment, including documents and catalogs and making sure to clear labs and storages (sic) of any traces of chemical or biological materials that were previously used or stored . . ."
plus, Jeremy, you are wrong on fact that in 98 Saddam did remove inspectors from Iraq.
Here are some more things from these documents: Remember, tons more to come out, we're talking thousands of documents here. Most are very damning. I feel bad for you that you have to keep defending Saddam for some reason.ANyway, here you go.....
Document dated March 23, 1997
A letter from the Iraqi intelligence service to directors and managers advising them to follow certain procedures in case of a search by the U.N. team, including:
Removing correspondence with the atomic energy and military industry departments concerning the prohibited weapons (proposals, research, studies, catalogs, etc.)
Removing prohibited materials and equipment, including documents and catalogs and making sure to clear labs and storages of any traces of chemical or biological materials that were previously used or stored
Doing so through a committee which will decide whether to destroy the documents
Removing files from computers.
Anon - maybe I can create a new domain, just you and I, and we can argue about shit all day. I think you're driving away my traffic ;-)
Anyway, I need to correct your mistaken ass about a few things, and clear some other shit up because I think I’m giving you the wrong impression. You throw so much at me I can’t possibly sit here and write paragraph-spaced prose, because it would be too annoying to read, so forgive me as I make my numbered points here instead.
1. First off – stop saying I’m defending Saddam. Liberals hate dictators, that’s why we’re fighting the Bush administration so much. We’re also big on human rights too – trust me, we didn’t like the guy either. Just because we’re against the war, doesn’t mean we like who we’re fighting. Just because we’re concerned about civil liberties, and soldiers dying it doesn’t mean we’re siding with the enemy. That’d be like me saying you want the troops to die because you support sending them into this war. It’s juvenile, its distracting, and makes it seem that you want to talk less about the issues, and more about slamming the 60% or so in this country that no longer support this invasion. Sling your Republican mud on someone else’s web site, or grow the fuck up.
2. Secondly, stop pasting giant articles from conservative authors here, just as you did with Jonah Goldberg’s piece above. Paste the link, paraphrase it – or, I’m even ok with you pasting a direct paragraph or two. But Goldberg is an asshole, and I’ve seen his stuff in the LA Times (you know, the liberal paper that printed this article) from the past, and I can’t even read the guy sometimes. I’ll just start deleting them until you can bring up your own points, and point to this comment when you cry censorship. Here, I’ll even give you an example of what I’m talking about. If you love your Goldberg article so much, I suggest reading the debunking of it here. See how I gave you a link and didn’t copy 10 paragraphs into the comments? Let me know if you need some html pointers.
3. Now that that’s out of the way, on to your points. In terms of Goldberg’s column, he’s making it sound as if Saddam’s had a good bluff going, and there was nothing Bush could have done about it. That is dead wrong. We had inspectors on the ground telling us nothing was there, and the stuff we did find – ALL non-chemical, ALL non-bio, ALL non-nuclear – was destroyed. Honestly – even if we found a nuclear facility and destroyed it, that would have been a circumstance for which we could have avoided war.
4. There are no credible documents that show a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam, that anyone is taking seriously. Period. Believe me, if there were, the media, and conservatives, including Bush himself, would be all over it, clinging to it as their last shred of hope. The two didn’t cooperate, there was no meeting in Prague, and the CIA has stated this, the president has stated this, and those who support the war have stated this. This ship has sailed, anon. The new justification is "we’re freeing the people and spreading democracy," and there is a reason why the justification has changed. It’s because everything that conservatives have hung on to prior to that, regarding Al Qaeda/Iraq/9-11 links, have not only turned out to be false, but embarrassingly so. The case was officially closed by the 9/11 Commission, with this statement. I suggest you cut and paste it so you have it handy the next time the Weekly Standard tries to feed you bullshit: ”…to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."
5. Now, considering how bad this administration wanted to link Iraq with al Qaeda, do you not thing for one second if they had any shred of evidence, they’d be screaming it from the rooftops, holding press conferences, and letting us know about it? With that said, why would they be so desperate to push the Democracy and Freeing the People justifications if they still had the al Qaeda thing. Do you realize how much the American people would be on board if we thought Iraq and al Qaeda were working together? 100,000 soldiers could die and the war would still have over 90% approval. You remind me of the few, dedicated people who still think Elvis is alive…people will just laugh at you when you bring up these myths and it makes anything else you say politically lose all credibility.
6. You don’t have to go to the 9/11 commission to get this stuff…look at your history. Look at the fact that the administration wants to link the two so badly and you may get an idea as to why these theories develop before someone proves they’re a myth, and you’ll see why this rogue information that no one is printing but the Free Republic and Weekly Standard are still out there. Look at the type of leader Saddam was and his stance on fundamental Islamists, his invasion of Iran and why that happened, the way he ruled, what he was paranoid about. No look at Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and their agenda and how different it is from Saddams in terms of Wahabiist, Muslim influence. Read up on what the experts are saying – guys who have done Middle Eastern intelligence for 30 years. This stuff is so obvious to them, they cringe at the comparisons.
7. I’d like to make another thing clear. You and other conservatives bring up a lot of stuff from the mid-1990’s in terms of your evidence that Iraq was poised to attack the united states via a terror network that doesn’t exist. EVEN IF most of the bullshit conspiracy theories were true about al Qaeda and Iraq sending messages through Africa in 1995, that is NOT a justification to invade! Saddam tried to assassinate Bush Sr a decade ago! Why invade their country 10 years later?
For christs sake, could you imagine if India just bombed Pakistan for something they did 10 years ago? When you retaliate for stuff, you need to do it immediately, no? You really want to sacrifice 100,000 Iraqis, 17,000 injured US soldiers, $400 billion, and 2,500 deaths of 18 year old American kids because Saddam tried to whack GHW back in the 90’s? If the Bush assassination plot got you so fired up, why didn’t you join the military 10 years ago? Do you see why I’m laughing at this?
8. Finally, you’re wrong. We pulled the inspectors in the 90’s and pulled them again in 2003 before our invasion. We said to them, “we’re coming in, get the hell out, or you may risk injury.” That’s irrefutable. Saddam never kicked them out. Had Saddam actually kicked them out, the UN would have went batshit, and honestly, so would I.
The fact is, the IAEA was there and found no nuclear facilities. The UN inspectors were there and found no WMD’s. The palaces were opening up, and Iraq’s cooperation was actually increasing, after a lot of deception at the start. There was simply nothing there, and these inspectors were screaming this from the top of their lungs.
I cannot understand for the life of me why you’re still clinging to the WMD justification, when EVERYONE – and I mean EVERYONE on your side gave up that fight over 2 years go. That doesn’t make you a conservative or a Republican, it makes you fucking insane. It really does – and I think name calling is usually a cop-out but you really need to wake up about a lot of this stuff before you’re the last one left. How sad would that be?
I will say one other thing here. If you really want to make Iraq into a terrorist state before we invaded…if you want to link Iraq to al Qaeda, 9/11, etc, even though it’s now so ridiculous it’s a punch line…if you want to turn Iraq into a threat before this war that was ready to invade, attack, or start war with the US, that’s fine. You’ll get laughed at by scholars, professors, intelligence people, etc, but that’s your business.
I'm not saying these two ships never passed in the night or that they didn't at least try to collaborate years ago. Saddam was never 100% terror free. However, the ways in which you’re connecting Iraq to WMD’s and al Qaeda is so thin, and so weak, all you and other conservatives can do is cite info from 1995, cite the assassination attempt on Bush, cite “WMD related program activities,” and other things to make your claims. I would then ask you two questions.
1. Do you really believe that vague documents, shaky connections, most of which have been not proven, and the canister of sarin gas left over from the Iran/Iraq war that was found to cause some dizziness among the solders who handled it (you said yourself they've found WMD's all over Iraq, this is the only thing I can even guess you were talking about), or an assassination attempt in the 90’s on a former US president is really worth the funeral my roommate is going to this week for a kid who had his head blown off? Would you give these justifications to that kid’s friends and his parents? What is it that you would say to them exactly?
2. Do you really think the real threats out there – nations we know have WMD’s or are cranking out terrorists by the truckload daily, or are currently slaughtering their people, – such as North Korea, such as Sudan, such as Saudi Arabia, such as Pakistan, such as Egypt, such as Palestine, such as Afghanistan such as Iran, such as Cuba, Kazakhstan, such as Yemen, such as Lebanon – are you willing to say that regime change with any of those nations should be put on the back burner in favor of invading a country that hardly had an army, had no WMD’s, had no Islamic terrorist problem, connection, or corporation, or threatened us specifically?
I just don’t understand why you’re not here saying, “Jesus Christ, did you see these documents on North Korea or Iran’s nuclear facilities? Did you hear that Kim Jong Il said he’s ready to fight us, or that Iran isn’t even going to allow inspections? Do you know that a terrorist group was just elected to rule the most volatile nation in the world? Why are we not invading them today!!!”
Think about those two things…and then tell me why you can’t understand why I can't even see your point most of the time.
Honestly, if you came here and said, "I think we should be in Iraq to spread Democracy in the Middle East," I'd actually understand where that theory could come from and we could debate it.
But if you're going to support wars over trace evidence, rumors or conspiracy theories...I don't know if we can even discuss this stuff on any sane level, I really don't.
I think we shoudl be in Iraq to spread deomcracy in the middle east.
That is why we're there.It's one among many reasons for our pre-emptive war.
Sorry If I am driving anyone away. Not my intention. Sorry if the people whom read your site can't read anything that doesn't fall in line with your propaganda and lies.
"The U.N. orders its weapons inspectors to leave Iraq after the chief inspector reports Baghdad is not fully cooperating with them."
-- Sheila MacVicar, ABC World News This Morning, 12/16/98
"To bolster its claim, Iraq let reporters see one laboratory U.N. inspectors once visited before they were kicked out four years ago."
--John McWethy, ABC World News Tonight, 8/12/02
"The Iraq story boiled over last night when the chief U.N. weapons inspector, Richard Butler, said that Iraq had not fully cooperated with inspectors and--as they had promised to do. As a result, the U.N. ordered its inspectors to leave Iraq this morning"
--Katie Couric, NBC's Today, 12/16/98
"As Washington debates when and how to attack Iraq, a surprise offer from Baghdad. It is ready to talk about re-admitting U.N. weapons inspectors after kicking them out four years ago."
--Maurice DuBois, NBC's Saturday Today, 8/3/02
"The chief U.N. weapons inspector ordered his monitors to leave Baghdad today after saying that Iraq had once again reneged on its promise to cooperate--a report that renewed the threat of U.S. and British airstrikes."
--AP, 12/16/98
"Information on Iraq's programs has been spotty since Saddam expelled U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998."
--AP, 9/7/02
"Immediately after submitting his report on Baghdad's noncompliance, Butler ordered his inspectors to leave Iraq."
--Los Angeles Times, 12/17/98
"It is not known whether Iraq has rebuilt clandestine nuclear facilities since U.N. inspectors were forced out in 1998, but the report said the regime lacks nuclear material for a bomb and the capability to make weapons."
--Los Angeles Times, 9/10/02
"The United Nations once again has ordered its weapons inspectors out of Iraq. Today's evacuation follows a new warning from chief weapons inspector Richard Butler accusing Iraq of once again failing to cooperate with the inspectors. The United States and Britain repeatedly have warned that Iraq's failure to cooperate with the inspectors could lead to air strikes."
--Bob Edwards, NPR, 12/16/98
"If he has secret weapons, he's had four years since he kicked out the inspectors to hide all of them."
--Daniel Schorr, NPR, 8/3/02
"This is the second time in a month that UNSCOM has pulled out in the face of a possible U.S.-led attack. But this time there may be no turning back. Weapons inspectors packed up their personal belongings and loaded up equipment at U.N. headquarters after a predawn evacuation order. In a matter of hours, they were gone, more than 120 of them headed for a flight to Bahrain."
--Jane Arraf, CNN, 12/16/98
"What Mr. Bush is being urged to do by many advisers is focus on the simple fact that Saddam Hussein signed a piece of paper at the end of the Persian Gulf War, promising that the United Nations could have unfettered weapons inspections in Iraq. It has now been several years since those inspectors were kicked out."
--John King, CNN, 8/18/02
"Russian Ambassador Sergei Lavrov criticized Butler for evacuating inspectors from Iraq Wednesday morning without seeking permission from the Security Council."
--USA Today, 12/17/98
"Saddam expelled U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998, accusing some of being U.S. spies."
--USA Today, 9/4/02
"But the most recent irritant was Mr. Butler's quick withdrawal from Iraq on Wednesday of all his inspectors and those of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iraqi nuclear programs, without Security Council permission. Mr. Butler acted after a telephone call from Peter Burleigh, the American representative to the United Nations, and a discussion with Secretary General Kofi Annan, who had also spoken to Mr. Burleigh."
--New York Times, 12/18/98
"America's goal should be to ensure that Iraq is disarmed of all unconventional weapons.... To thwart this goal, Baghdad expelled United Nations arms inspectors four years ago."
--New York Times editorial, 8/3/02
"Butler ordered his inspectors to evacuate Baghdad, in anticipation of a military attack, on Tuesday night--at a time when most members of the Security Council had yet to receive his report."
--Washington Post, 12/18/98
"Since 1998, when U.N. inspectors were expelled, Iraq has almost certainly been working to build more chemical and biological weapons."
--Washington Post editorial, 8/4/02
"Butler abruptly pulled all of his inspectors out of Iraq shortly after handing Annan a report yesterday afternoon on Baghdad's continued failure to cooperate with UNSCOM, the agency that searches for Iraq's prohibited weapons of mass destruction."
-- Newsday, 12/17/98
"The reason Hussein gave was that the U.N. inspectors' work was completed years ago, before he kicked them out in 1998, and they dismantled whatever weapons they found. That's disingenuous."
--Newsday editorial, 8/14/02
Well Christ, its about time. Now, I can see that argument. I really can, I just disagree with it.
If you tell me we're still there for weapons and that there wasn't a mountain of evidence that those weapons didn't exist, then you're arguing with fact.
So what is it about democracy in the middle east that makes you think its our job to install it, that it will work, or that it should be installed at the point of a gun by a foreign country.
What if the Soviet Union thought Communism would save the world and make them safer - would it have been ok for them to invade say Afghanistan (you know, hypothetically speaking), and would you have supported that?
And about pre-emption...what if North Korea felt a lot better off if South Korea was just out of the way and felt that South Korea had weapons it shouldn't have. Is it ok for North Korea to invade?
How about Democracy in China, one of the largest human rights abusers in the world? Why not invade Saudi Arabia - they have almost zero rights and their people keep flying planes into our buildings. Their women can't even leave the house alone...Iraq had universities where women could study and each lunch at the same table as the men.
Why not drop Democracy bombs over Sudan...
Also, how has Democracy worked for some of the nations trying it. How did Egypt's parliment turn out in the last election. How is Iran doing, who did the Palestinians choose as their leaders?
How is Iraq's doing, and how is their relationship with Shiite Iran affected?
You see where I'm going with this?
I would have to ask you - with more weapons in North Korea owned by a regime poor and desperate enough to want to sell them, and with more of their own people dying with less freedom, bordering one a closer ally than we have in any Middle Eastern nation, do you support the invasion of North Korea, say, by next week?
You are incorrect. This is a lie. Saddam doesn't kick out inspectors, they either leave on their own accord, or leave because we're going to bomb there. Richard Butler kicked them out in 1998, not Saddam. You're 100% incorrect. Again.
And again, Saddam didn't kick them out in 2003. I remember it vividly, and don't even have to look that one up.
"The story centers on the Iraq crisis that broke out on December 16, 1998. Richard Butler, head of the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq, had just released a report accusing the Iraqi regime of obstructing U.N. weapons checks. On the basis of that report, President Clinton announced he would launch airstrikes against Iraqi targets. Out of concern for their safety, Butler withdrew his inspectors from Iraq, and the U.S.-British bombing proceeded.
The Washington Post reported all these facts correctly at the time: A December 18 article by national security correspondent Barton Gellman reported that "Butler ordered his inspectors to evacuate Baghdad, in anticipation of a military attack, on Tuesday night."
But in the 14 months since then, the Washington Post has again and again tried to rewrite history--claiming that Saddam Hussein expelled the U.N. inspectors from Iraq. Despite repeated attempts by its readers to set the record straight in letters to the editor, the Post has persisted in reporting this fiction.
Not only did Saddam Hussein not order the inspectors' retreat, but Butler's decision to withdraw them was--to say the least--highly controversial. The Washington Post (12/17/98) reported that as Butler was drafting his report on Iraqi cooperation, U.S. officials were secretly consulting with him about how to frame his conclusions.
According to the Post, a New York diplomat "generally sympathetic to Washington" argued--along with French, Russian, Chinese, and U.N. officials--that Butler, working in collusion with the U.S., "deliberately wrote a justification for war." "Based on the same facts," the diplomat said, "he [Butler] could have just said, 'There were something like 300 inspections and we encountered difficulties in five.'"
What follows is a chronology of the Washington Post's 14-month reign of error. On at least five separate occasions, the Post falsely reported that Saddam Hussein expelled the U.N. weapons inspectors in December 1998. In three of these instances, the gaffe was made by foreign affairs columnist Fred Hiatt or by the Post editorial page, which Hiatt now edits.
Of course, the Post is not alone. The New York Times made the same mistake seven times (1/8/99, 4/16/99, 8/20/99, 10/28/99, 11/18/99, 12/17/99, 2/1/00) before finally printing a correction on February 2, 2000. The Chicago Tribune (12/18/99), Boston Globe (10/21/99), Washington Times (11/5/99), AP (12/2/99), NewsweekM (8/30/99), USA Today (12/9/99) and NBC News (12/19/99) have all made the same error.
"In 1998 Iraq accused Butler and other UNSCOM officials of acting as spies for the United States, but the UNSCOM weapons inspectors were not expelled from the country by Iraq as has often been reported (and as George W. Bush alleged in his infamous "axis of evil" speech). Rather, according to Butler himself in his book Saddam Defiant (2000), it was U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, acting on instructions from Washington, who suggested Butler pull his team from Iraq in order to protect them from the forthcoming U.S. and British airstrikes."
Anything else you've dug up? Keep em coming.
AND...with that said...I'll ask you again...
Even if it was true Saddam kicked them out in 1998, - and it is NOT - would you be willing to show up at this soldier's funeral in Maine this weekend and tell his parents that he died because Saddam kicked out the inspectors in 1998.
After ther inspectors were kicked out in 98, Sadam didn't want them to return.I understand it's semantics to a point, but the reasons still stand .The inspectors were there for a reason, and that reason you believe is a lie.Saddam had no WMD right ?
We could go in circles all day long. I proved my point .
And come on Jeremy, what are you trying to gain by telling me I should go to a soldiers funeral and tell the family that their son died because Saddam kicked out inspectors ? First of all, thats not why we went to War to begin with. The inspectors were kicked out because your boy Clinton was Bombing them, something you seem to have no problem with .
Secondly, those parents of that soldier don't need me to tell them anything. and insinuating I tell them anything is retarded.This isn't Vietnam, their son joined VOLUNTARILY. It's is awful he has died fighting for his country, but that is something everyone who joins knows can happen. Regardless of why you think this war is wrong, trying to politicize a soldier on a blog in order to try to make me feel bad that this young man died is ludicrous. You should be ashamed.
We're there for many reasons, reasons lnked to WMD, Terrorism, Deomcoracy in the middle east.
And it is working. Pay attention a little better.
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Thomas, you have just discovered amazing new information - Iraq's connections to Al Qaeda - that the entire administration, and every sentator and representitive of the United States doesn't know about.
I suggest you write your representitives immediately and give them this info. It will be shocking.
The good news anon is that youre not the only person left on the planet sticking to this rationale. You've Tom here to help you out.
Whenever people try to defend the soldiers or are upset about their deaths, conservatives bring up the point they it's voluntary, as if their lives mean less. That is amazing to me. Yet your lapel American flag pins are the shiniest.
You're both fucking sickening. You really are.
the soldiers don't need defending jeremy. The vast majority of them are behind Buhs on this war and actually believe what they are doing over there. Unlike you and your ilk who believe they are over there illegally.
I don't understand how you are still blind to all the connections I've given you about the Al Queda Iraq Connections. Your Billy Bob Clinton has even made that connection back in the day, remember, that was the time where actions against Iraq were OKAY, because it wasn't a republican conservative in charge.
Google CLINTON IRAQ 98 and have some fun there, you can read for yourself him making connections to WMD, Al Queda, Terrorism. What changed in those four years other then the president ? Seriously ask yourself that.
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Honestly Thomas your comments are so rediculous I'm deleting them. On every news channel, in ever newspaper and in every Congressional meeting around the country I see this bullshit and it's time that people no longer have a platform for this.
The "you're helping the enemy but not siding with the president" bullshit will never cease to amaze me, despite the facts being on the side of those not in favor of this administration.
If this were Nazi Germany during the 1930's this would be acceptable, but I'm sorry, I don't let this shit fly around here.
I wish you the best of luck spewing it elsewhere.
When are you going to learn that just because clinton has a stance on something, liberals don't necessarily agree with it? We're not sheep, and we criticize our own leaders. Your Republican party is that exact opposite and it disgusts us.
I've disproved every single Iraq/Al Qaeda connection you've made, because all you do is get evidence from ultra right wing media organizations...
Remember when you told me that Iraq hid their weapons in Syria? Do you realize the only group saying that was the Free Republic, and some disgraced general from Iraq who hasn't set foot in the country for almost 8 years?
If you are ready to talk facts I'm all for it...everything you say has been so incredibly unfounded its more of a distraction than anything else.
The major difference is the fact that Clinton didn't have Colin Powell using lies and bullshit at the UN trying to sell this lemon, knowing full well that the "intelligence" was unsupported and questionable at best(Powell didn't even agree with it). While Clinton may have believed in a connection he didn't invade a sovereign nation "on a hunch"
So when did you hold those protests abotu Clintons Operation Desert Fox ?
* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddams hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary.
* Bin Laden met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam's son Qusay, and met with officials from Saddams mukhabarat, its external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was speaking before the United Nations Security Council on February 6, 2003.
* Sudanese intelligence officials told me that their agents had observed meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994, when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.
* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Mr. Powell.
* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid-1990s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddams men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
* In 1999 the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a senior officer in Iraqs mukhabarat, had journeyed deep into the icy mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al Qaeda men. Mr. Hijazi is "thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq," the Guardian reported.
* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities, according to Janes Foreign Report, a respected international newsletter. Janes reported that Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, now al Qaedas No. 2 man.
(Why are all of those meetings significant? The London Observer reports that FBI investigators cite a captured al Qaeda field manual in Afghanistan, which "emphasizes the value of conducting discussions about pending terrorist attacks face to face, rather than by electronic means.")
* As recently as 2001, Iraqs embassy in Pakistan was used as a "liaison" between the Iraqi dictator and al Qaeda, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
* Spanish investigators have uncovered documents seized from Yusuf Galan -- who is charged by a Spanish court with being "directly involved with the preparation and planning" of the Sept. 11 attacks -- that show the terrorist was invited to a party at the Iraqi embassy in Madrid. The invitation used his "al Qaeda nom de guerre," Londons Independent reports.
* An Iraqi defector to Turkey, known by his cover name as "Abu Mohammed," told Gwynne Roberts of the Sunday Times of London that he saw bin Ladens fighters in camps in Iraq in 1997. At the time, Mohammed was a colonel in Saddams Fedayeen. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad. At that vast compound run by Iraqi intelligence, Muslim militants trained to hijack planes with knives -- on a full-size Boeing 707. Col. Mohammed recalls his first visit to Salman Pak this way: "We were met by Colonel Jamil Kamil, the camp manager, and Major Ali Hawas. I noticed that a lot of people were queuing for food. (The major) said to me: Youll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama bin Ladens group and the PKK and Mojahedin-e Khalq."
* In 1998, Abbas al-Janabi, a longtime aide to Saddams son Uday, defected to the West. At the time, he repeatedly told reporters that there was a direct connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.
*The Sunday Times found a Saddam loyalist in a Kurdish prison who claims to have been Dr. Zawahiris bodyguard during his 1992 visit with Saddam in Baghdad. Dr. Zawahiri was a close associate of bin Laden at the time and was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989.
* Following the defeat of the Taliban, almost two dozen bin Laden associates "converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there," Mr. Powell told the United Nations in February 2003. From their Baghdad base, the secretary said, they supervised the movement of men, materiel and money for al Qaedas global network.
* In 2001, an al Qaeda member "bragged that the situation in Iraq was good," according to intelligence made public by Mr. Powell.
* That same year, Saudi Arabian border guards arrested two al Qaeda members entering the kingdom from Iraq.
* Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi oversaw an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, Mr. Powell told the United Nations. His specialty was poisons. Wounded in fighting with U.S. forces, he sought medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002. When Zarqawi recovered, he restarted a training camp in northern Iraq. Zarqawis Iraq cell was later tied to the October 2002 murder of Lawrence Foley, an official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan. The captured assassin confessed that he received orders and funds from Zarqawis cell in Iraq, Mr. Powell said. His accomplice escaped to Iraq.
*Zarqawi met with military chief of al Qaeda, Mohammed Ibrahim Makwai (aka Saif al-Adel) in Iran in February 2003, according to intelligence sources cited by the Washington Post.
* Mohammad Atef, the head of al Qaedas military wing until the U.S. killed him in Afghanistan in November 2001, told a senior al Qaeda member now in U.S. custody that the terror network needed labs outside of Afghanistan to manufacture chemical weapons, Mr. Powell said. "Where did they go, where did they look?" said the secretary. "They went to Iraq."
* Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was sent to Iraq by bin Laden to purchase poison gases several times between 1997 and 2000. He called his relationship with Saddams regime "successful," Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
* Mohamed Mansour Shahab, a smuggler hired by Iraq to transport weapons to bin Laden in Afghanistan, was arrested by anti-Hussein Kurdish forces in May, 2000. He later told his story to American intelligence and a reporter for the New Yorker magazine.
* Documents found among the debris of the Iraqi Intelligence Center show that Baghdad funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden. According to a Londons Daily Telegraph, the organization offered to recruit "youth to train for the jihad" at a "headquarters for international holy warrior network" to be established in Baghdad.
* Mullah Melan Krekar, ran a terror group (the Ansar al-Islam) linked to both bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Krekar admitted to a Kurdish newspaper that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan and other senior al Qaeda officials. His acknowledged meetings with bin Laden go back to 1988. When he organized Ansar al Islam in 2001 to conduct suicide attacks on Americans, "three bin Laden operatives showed up with a gift of $300,000 to undertake jihad," Newsday reported. Mr. Krekar is now in custody in the Netherlands. His group operated in portion of northern Iraq loyal to Saddam Hussein -- and attacked independent Kurdish groups hostile to Saddam. A spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told a United Press International correspondent that Mr. Krekars group was funded by "Saddam Husseins regime in Baghdad."
* After October 2001, hundreds of al Qaeda fighters are believed to have holed up in the Ansar al-Islams strongholds inside northern Iraq.
I am not even bringing up all the recently discovered documents outlining all of the connections. We haven't even broken the surface here.
The Al Zaqawri is enough, he was able to operate in Iraq no problem. He still is operating in Iraq, but this time with a problem.
You are defending our enemies, I'm not saying this to make you made or a traitor, I think you are jsut caught up in all the Buhs hatred, that you are missing a big part of this . Theser connections existed. We've known about it for along time.
Clinton didn't incade on a hunch, He invaded (operation Desert Fox) on the same information, and rightfully so, that Bush has used.
No he didnt? What the hell are you talking about? Are you sure you were even alive in 1998? When the hell did we "invade" and send troops to Baghdad in 1998?
Since then there was a TON of info stating that there were no weapons? The inspections worked!
—[Early 2001] State Department's INR Bureau and John Bolton Clash of Iraq Intelligence
Shortly after Bush is inaugurated into office, Greg Thielmann, an analyst for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), is appointed to serve as the intelligence liaison to John Bolton. But Thielmann's intelligence briefings do not support Bolton's assumptions about Iraq, and Thielmann is soon barred from attending the meetings. According to Thielmann: “Bolton seemed to be troubled because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear. I was intercepted at the door of his office and told, ‘The undersecretary doesn't need you to attend this meeting anymore. The undersecretary wants to keep this in the family.’
—[February, 2001] The Bush Administration received CIA warnings that there was no evidence of a nuclear threat.
In February 2001, the CIA delivered a report to the White House that said: “We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programs." The report was so definitive that Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a subsequent press conference, Saddam Hussein “has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.” He added Saddam "is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors" and that "he threatens not the United States." See for yourself by watching this video.
—[September 11, 2001] They wanted to attack Iraq from the start.
There is no doubt even though there was no proof of Iraq’s complicity, the White House was focused on Iraq within hours of the 9/11 attacks. As CBS News reported, “barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq.” Former Bush counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke recounted vividly how, just after the attack, President Bush pressured him to find an Iraqi connection. In many ways, this was no surprise—as former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and another administration official confirmed, the White House was actually looking for a way to invade Iraq well before the terrorist attacks.
But such an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country required a public rationale. And so the Bush administration struck fear into the hearts of Americans about Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMD, starting with nuclear arms. In his first major address on the “Iraqi threat” in October 2002, President Bush invoked fiery images of mushroom clouds and mayhem, saying, “Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.”
—[September 16, 2001] Dick Cheney Claims Iraq is contained.
On Sept. 16th, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said that "Saddam Hussein is bottled up," on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, based on a confirmation of the intelligence he had received.
—[Late September, 2001] The White House creates a special office to circumvent intelligence agencies.
The Pentagon creates the Office of Special Plans "in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true-that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States…The rising influence of the Office of Special Plans was accompanied by a decline in the influence of the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. bringing about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community."
—[December 2002] The Bush Administration lies about the aluminum tubes claim to bolster this nuclear threat.
In late 2002, Colin Powell said, “Iraq has tried to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes which can be used to enrich uranium in centrifuges for a nuclear weapons program.” Similarly, in his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush said Iraq “has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.”
But, in October 2002, well before these and other administration officials made this claim, two key agencies told the White House exactly the opposite. The State Department affirmed reports from Energy Department experts who concluded those tubes were ill-suited for any kind of uranium enrichment. And according to memos released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the State Department also warned Powell not to use the aluminum tubes hypothesis in the days before his February 2003 U.N. speech. He refused and used the aluminum tubes claim anyway.
The State Department’s warnings were soon validated by the IAEA. In March 2003, the agency’s director stated, “Iraq’s efforts to import these aluminum tubes were not likely to be related” to nuclear weapons deployment.
Yet, this evidence did not stop the White House either. Pretending the administration never received any warnings at all, Rice claimed in July 2003 that “the consensus view” in the intelligence community was that the tubes “were suitable for use in centrifuges to spin material for nuclear weapons.”
—[January 2002] The CIA and State Department collaborate on the fact that Iraq was no where near developing a nuclear program
In January 2002,, an intelligence review by CIA Director George Tenet contained not a single mention of an imminent nuclear threat—or capability—from Iraq. The CIA was backed up by Bush’s own State Department: Around the time Bush gave his speech, the department’s intelligence bureau said that evidence did not “add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what [we] consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons.”
—[February 2002] The CIA claims Iraq has not provided WMD's to terrorists
"The Central Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is also convinced that President Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda or related terrorist groups, according to several American intelligence officials." -- NY Times, February 6th, 2002
—[August 2002] CIA Warnings to the White House are exposed:
In the late summer of 2002, Sen. Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive.
—[August 2002] DIA tells the White House there is no evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq
An unclassified excerpt of a 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency study on Iraq's chemical warfare program in which it stated that there is ‘no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.’ The report also said, "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions. Read parts of the report for yourself, here.
—[September 2002] Bush lies about Al Qaeda/Iraq Connection
It started on September 25, 2002, when Bush said, “you can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam.” This was news even to members of Bush’s own political party who had access to classified intelligence. Just a month before, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “Saddam is not in league with al Qaeda. I have not seen any intelligence that would lead me to connect Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda."
To no surprise, the day after Bush’s statement, USA Today reported several intelligence experts “expressed skepticism” about the claim, with a Pentagon official calling the president’s assertion an “exaggeration.” No matter, Bush ignored these concerns and that day described Saddam Hussein as “a man who loves to link up with al Qaeda.” Meanwhile, Rumsfeld held a press conference trumpeting “bulletproof” evidence of a connection—a sentiment echoed by Rice and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. And while the New York Times noted, “the officials offered no details to back up the assertions,” Rumsfeld nonetheless insisted his claims were “accurate and not debatable.”
—[September 2002] Bush lies about Chemical/Biological weapons threat.
In September 2002, President Bush said Iraq “could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given.” The next month, he delivered a major speech to “outline the Iraqi threat,” just two days before a critical U.N. vote. In his address, he claimed without doubt that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons.” He said that “Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons” and that the government was “concerned Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States.”
As the Washington Post later reported, Bush “ignored the fact that U.S. intelligence mistrusted the source” of the 45-minute claim and, therefore, omitted it from its intelligence estimates. And Bush ignored the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency previously submitted a report to the administration finding “no reliable information” to prove Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons. According to Newsweek, the conclusion was similar to the findings of a 1998 government commission on WMD chaired by Rumsfeld.
Bush also neglected to point out that in early October 2002, the administration’s top military experts told the White House they “sharply disputed the notion that Iraq’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were being designed as attack weapons.” Specifically, the Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center correctly showed the drones in question were too heavy to be used to deploy chemical/biological-weapons spray devices.
—[October 2002] Iraq/Al Qaeda connection begins to be debunked
A growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in [Bush’s] own government privately have "deep misgivings” about the Iraq-al Qaeda claims. The experts charged that administration hawks “exaggerated evidence.” A senior U.S. official told the Philadelphia Inquirer that intelligence analysts “contest the administration’s suggestion of a major link between Iraq and al Qaeda.”
While this evidence forced British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other allies to refrain from playing up an Iraq-al Qaeda connection, the Bush administration refused to be deterred by facts.
On November 1, 2002, President Bush claimed, “We know [Iraq has] got ties with al Qaeda.” Four days later, Europe’s top terrorism investigator Jean-Louis Bruguiere reported: “We have found no evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda. If there were such links, we would have found them. But we have found no serious connections whatsoever.” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whose country was helping build the case for war, admitted, “What I’m asked is if I’ve seen any evidence of [Iraq-al Qaeda connections]. And the answer is: ‘I haven’t."
Soon, an avalanche of evidence appeared indicating the White House was deliberately misleading America. In January 2003, intelligence officials told the Los Angeles Times that they were “puzzled by the administration’s new push” to create the perception of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection and said the intelligence community has “discounted—if not dismissed—information believed to point to possible links between Iraq and al Qaeda.” One intelligence official said, “There isn’t a factual basis” for the administration’s conspiracy theory about the so-called connection.
—[December 2002] Cheney Pressures CIA to change Intelligence.
Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual, face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the administration's claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several other intelligence veterans interviewed. Additionally, CIA officials charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department and vice president's office had 'pressured' agency analysts to paint a dire picture of Saddam's capabilities and intentions. [Sources: Dallas Morning News, 7/28/03; Newsweek, 7/28/03]
—[January 2003] State Department reiterates warning to Powell:
"The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the State Department's in-house analysis unit, and nuclear experts at the Department of Energy are understood to have explicitly warned Secretary of State Colin Powell during the preparation of his speech that the evidence was questionable. The Bureau reiterated to Mr. Powell during the preparation of his February speech that its analysts were not persuaded that the aluminum tubes the Administration was citing could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium." [Source: Financial Times, 7/30/03]
—[January 2003] Bush lies in State of the Union speech about Iraq/Niger uranium connection.
Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The careful phrasing of this statement highlights how dishonest it was. By attributing the claim to an allied government, the White House made a powerful charge yet protected itself against any consequences should it be proved false. In fact, the president invoked the British because his own intelligence experts had earlier warned the White House not to make the claim at all.
Just months before this speech, the CIA told administration officials not to include this uranium assertion in presidential speeches. Specifically, the agency sent two memos to the White House and Tenet personally called top national security officials imploring them not to use the claim. While the warnings forced the White House to remove a uranium reference from an October 2002 presidential address, they did not stop the charge from being included in the 2003 State of the Union.
Later, US Ambassador Joe Wilson later wrote a piece disproving the uranium claim.
—[February 13, 2003] UN inspectors warn the White House that no WMD's have been found.
"In their third progress report since U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 was passed in November, inspectors told the council they had not found any weapons of mass destruction." Weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council they had been unable to find any WMD in Iraq and that more time was needed for inspections.
—[February 15, 2003] – IAEA warns White house of no nuclear evidence.
The head of the IAEA told the U.N. in February that "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq." The IAEA examined "2,000 pages of documents seized Jan. 16 from an Iraqi scientist's home -- evidence, the Americans said, that the Iraqi regime was hiding government documents in private homes. The documents, including some marked classified, appear to be the scientist's personal files." However, "the documents, which contained information about the use of laser technology to enrich uranium, refer to activities and sites known to the IAEA and do not change the agency's conclusions about Iraq's laser enrichment program
—[March 2003] Despite all this data to the contrary, Dick Cheney announces Iraq as a nuclear threat.
In March 2003, Cheney went on national television days before the war and claimed Iraq “has reconstituted nuclear weapons.” He was echoed by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who told reporters of supposedly grave “concerns about Iraq’s potential nuclear programs.”
—[March 2003] Documents proving the Niger/Iraq connection were officially found to be forgeries by the IAEA.
In March 2003, IAEA Director Mohammed El Baradei said there was no proof Iraq had nuclear weapons and added “documents which formed the basis for [the White House’s assertion] of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic.” But when Cheney was asked about this a week later, he said, “Mr. El Baradei frankly is wrong.” Later in 2003, the CIA is critical of the British intelligence report.
—[June 6, 2003] Intelligence Historian says WMD claims were hyped.
"The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq , a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed study of the spy agency's public pronouncements."
—[August 2003] Former Bush officials expose Al Qaeda threat as complete bullshit
Three former Bush administration officials came forward to admit pre-war evidence tying al Qaeda to Iraq “was tenuous, exaggerated, and often at odds with the conclusions of key intelligence agencies.” Further, the chairman of the U.N. group that monitors al Qaeda told reporters his team found no evidence linking the terrorist group to Iraq. In July 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported the bipartisan congressional report analyzing September 11 “undercut Bush administration claims before the war that Hussein had links to al Qaeda.” Meanwhile, the New York Times reported, “Coalition forces have not brought to light any significant evidence demonstrating the bond between Iraq and al Qaeda."
—[September 2003] Around this time, Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is outed as being a CIA Agent.
A high-level administration official or officials leaked to the press that Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife was an undercover CIA agent—a move widely seen as an attempt by the administration to punish Wilson for his July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed that stated he had found no evidence of an Iraqi effort to purchase uranium from Niger.
—[March 2004] More officials dismiss Iraq/Al Qaeda claims
Knight Ridder report that quoted administration officials conceding “there never was any evidence that Hussein’s secular police state and Osama bin Laden’s Islamic terror network were in league."
—[June 2004] Bush continues lying about Al Qaeda and Iraq connections
“The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.”
Desert Fox was an invasion? I must have missed the whole "invading" part. More like a political move done during his impeachment
Sorry dudes, but dropping over 800 bombs on Iraq is an "invasion" of sorts. You would think so if you were working in an aspirin factory in Iraq, or if Bush were doing the dropping of bombs.No troops on the ground, but an air assualt occured.
And jeremy, you aren't proving that there wasn't a coneciton. You can't. Becaue it did exist. Clinton even said so, I don't see you trying to prove him wrong and say he lied over and over again.
Point is, you are spending alot of time trying to prove the US wrong, and Islamic terrorists right. Something is wrong with this picture. You are giving Saddam Husein the benefit of the doubt, and saying your own country is the real terrorist.
See that's my point exactly. She me where Clinton spoke about direct ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and I'll say he's wrong, over and over again. If he says the sky is green, just because he's Bill Clinton doesn't mean he's right. I'm not a Democrat.
Secondly, I've never said the America was a terrorist nation.
Thirdly, and most important, our whole debate of Iraq and Saddam exists because I am pissed, and most of the country is pissed, that we're NOT going after terrorists, and instead we're in Iraq?
What don't you undertstand about that?
Why would I be trying to prove the US wrong if I'm agreeing with most of the country on the Iraq issue?
Our soldiers have said, overwhelming, they want to get out of there in a year. Are they supporting terrorists too?
Countless veterans and veterans groups are against this war. Are they supporting the terrorists?
Most of the Iraq vets coming home are running as Democrats due to this war and how we conducted it. Are they supporting the terrorists?
The pentagon has issued reports saying we are too thin in Iraq and can't win this war. Are they siding with the terrorists?
Former Neocons are saying that we invaded the wrong country now and the war is not being conducted well...are they siding with the terrorists?
If we nuked the shit out of Canada tomorrow based on false intelligence and you spoke up about it, yet the president ordered it, if someone accused you of being unpatriotic, how many times would you have to count to ten before you felt you weren't going to lose your mind? Just curious.
Looking at the last fifty years of this country's foreign policy would indicate we are terrorists...just a little more sophisticated than suicide bombers and IED's
wow. people are still clinging to the WMD theory?
you can't argue with these people jeremy. they are not into facts, and they just will not accept them. they get all their info from conservative conspiracy theorists, and even the mainstream people of their party wouldn't touch some of this stuff b/c no one would take them seriously.
most of the world is pointing and laughing at them and they dont even know.
Whenever I watch or read about King George getting stumped by questions I wish we had a parliament so he'd have to answer questions (like Blair). Even though he didn't win the first election, I doubt he would have won the Rep nomination for the second.
Love Helen Thomas. I'm 98% sure she is the reporter who said she'd kill herself if Cheney became president. I think most of us would.
Another anon Bushusefool. They are springing up everywhere. Methinks it is a doppelganger game.
Hey anon - Did you not hear? Most Americans and the Troops don't beleive your glorious Leader anymore.
Peace.
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