Iraq war, Saddam, Bush Admin ...again [Archive] - Debate Policy

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revelarts

02-08-2016, 10:12 AM

For the record.

Some have assumed I've "forgotten", ignored or purposely overlooked certains aspects of history leading up to the Iraqi conflict.
I haven't.
But it seems to me others simply want to justify Americas actions no matter what they are. Pretending the U.S. can do no wrong in going to war or even in war. And I get the impression from Drummond that you'd rather ...um ... obfuscate the full truth of the situation rather than give "our enemies" any facts to use as "propaganda" against us. But IMO historically speaking if anyone is interested in being objective, non-partisan, and willing to look at ALL of the evidence available then it seems to me very clear that Bush and his Admin pushed the world into an unnecessary war by using truths, half-truths, outdated truths and lies to convince the american people and U.N. that we were in mortal danger from WMDs and that Saddam was too unbearably to stay in power.
No one questions or forgets that Saddam burned oil fields, killed kurds, oppressed his own people, used chemical weapons, did not comply with U.N. resolutions, wasn't democratic. The question is do any and ALL of those things add up to a legal justification, Nuremberg justification, justification for American troops and money to INVADE and overthrow a small nation. They never have BEFORE in history. And since what was presented to the WORLD as the PRIMARY reason to invade was in fact WMDs, then it was an invasion under false pretense.

That's how i see it.

Now if others think the U.S has the right to simply tell other countries what to do OR ELSE we'll invade and overthrow your gov't..
then of course SURE, we can invade anyone at anytime who we don't like or who looks at us sideways if that's the standard.

But if we're claiming to be the good guys who believe in national sovereignty and national self determination, signed international war treaties then we need to act like it. not just talk like it or make up thin excuses not to act like it.
But if we're just invaders and imperialist or international gangsters just making sure we get our way no matter what, then we should own it.
yaknowwhatimean?

I suspect some here don't mind being the gangster, and being up front about it.
If that's the case fine just don't lie to everyone that we're doing it for any other reasons. democracy, freedom, safety.
Just own it. We're not the good guys we're just "wise guys" bullies and gangsters. Pressuring nations or invading nations that don't "play ball". kapish
Some might take offense and say something like --no, we're not because other nations are worse.--
Well just because you're a nicer gangster, who treats family well, doesn't mean you're not a gangster.

....
All that to say I'm just going post the evidence and reasons why I come to the conclusion i do here historically.
Feel free to post other historical info.

I suspect many will want to attack me and my motives, allegiances, patriotism, courage, sources, sanity, shoe size, etc.. OK fine
but i'm mainly trying to post historical info at this point not to debate it so much, we've done that a few times already.
I'll even repost some info that supports the other side.

Reason why I'm posting this , because Drummond assumes i'm making stuff up in another trhaed i don't want to derail anymore.

revelarts

02-08-2016, 10:15 AM

IN no particular Order. I'm just dropping data/evidence.

Where did Saddam get his chemical weapons from?

U.S. Senate reports say he got much of it from the U.S.
The Riegle Report -- United States Senate, 103d Congress, 2d Session
May 25, 1994
U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Gulf War..

http://usiraq.procon.org/view.answer...stionID=000894 (http://usiraq.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000894)

http://usiraq.procon.org/view.resour...ourceID=000674 (http://usiraq.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000674)

http://usiraq.procon.org/view.answer...stionID=000900 (http://usiraq.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000900)

http://usiraq.procon.org/sourcefiles...gao-2-7-94.pdf (http://usiraq.procon.org/sourcefiles/us_mil_items_exported_gao-2-7-94.pdf)

http://usiraq.procon.org/sourcefiles...sesOnePage.pdf (http://usiraq.procon.org/sourcefiles/ApprovedLicensesOnePage.pdf)
http://usiraq.procon.org/sourcefiles...es_to_Iraq.pdf (http://usiraq.procon.org/sourcefiles/Approved_Licenses_to_Iraq.pdf)

http://usiraq.procon.org/sourcefiles/riegle-rpt.pdf

revelarts

02-08-2016, 10:35 AM

Saddam Failed to comply with resolution, therefore he deserved invasion
But many other nations have fails to obey U.N. resolution but have not Been invaded.

....Other cases of noncompliance include Morocco, which invaded the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara in 1975 and remains in occupation there; Turkey, which invaded Cyprus in 1974 and remains in occupation of the northern one-third of the island in violation of U.N. demands that it withdraw; and Indonesia, which in 1975 invaded and occupied East Timor shortly before East Timor was slated to attain independence, but withdrew from the island in 1999. There are also U.N. resolutions relating to Kashmir, Angola, and numerous other conflicts around the world.According to Stephen Zunes, an associate professor of politics at San Francisco University and Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus, the list of Security Council resolutions that Bush has charged the Baghdad regime is flouting is shorter than the list of U.N. Security Council resolutions currently being violated by U.S. allies.
“Not only has the United States not talked about invading these countries, the United States has blocked sanctions or other means of enforcing them and even provides military and economic aid that makes their ongoing violations possible,” said Zunes.
Because the Security Council has not authorized the use of force, the United States’ patrolling of “no-fly zones” in Iraq is itself illegal, said Zunes, even though this is done in the name of enforcing U.N. resolutions.
“Member states have spoken out against this clearly. [U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan has said there is no such authorization for this kind of action,” Zunes said. “If the United States could unilaterally bomb Iraq for its violations, what’s to stop Russia from bombing Israel or France from bombing Turkey or Great Britain from bombing Morocco? Those states are also in violation of United Nations resolutions. That’s the logic the United States is employing.”...

...In demanding that the United Nations do more to hold Iraq accountable, President Bush is taking an unusual step. Historically, the United Nations has been reluctant to enforce its own decrees, and when it has done so has usually preferred economic coercion via sanctions to military force. Since the United Nations was founded following World War II, it has imposed sanctions in 14 cases: Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Haiti, Iraq, Liberia, Libya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Sudan and the former Yugoslavia.
“The usual problem is getting any state to be willing to enforce a resolution,” said Jeffrey Laurenti, executive director of policy studies at the United Nations Association of the United States of America. “The United States by and large has been as reluctant as most to see that resolutions were complied with. Certainty, this is true of Angola, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Rwanda. You often have a marked disinclination even of the Security Council’s guarantor powers to put their own powers on the line in enforcement.”
Though President Bush challenged the United Nations to in effect put up or shut up to compel Iraqi compliance with its resolutions, Laurenti said many think the United Nations is, in fact, putting up when it applies economic sanctions to Iraq.
“Some would say that the economic sanctions have already been proving the U.N.’s relevance. It’s not for one country to decide whether the U.N.’s methods of enforcement are relevant but up to the full membership of the council to evaluate the threat,” Laurenti said.
With the exception of Haiti in 1994 when the United Nations authorized the use of force to remove the threat posed by Haiti’s military junta, Laurenti said the United Nations has authorized military force only in cases where armed conflict is already taking place -- Korea in 1950; Kuwait 1990-91; Bosnia and Herzegovina episodically from 1993-95. Authorization to use force was extended to France’s intervention in Rwanda after the massacres and to Italy’s operation in Albania in 1997....

http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives/092702/092702d.htm

UN Security Council Resolutions Being Violated by U.S. AlliesSeptember 1, 2002 By journalist (http://www.accuracy.org/author/journalist/)
The following are some of the UN Security Council resolutions being violated by U.S. allies:
Resolution 252 (1968) Israel: Urgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures that change the legal status of Jerusalem, including the expropriation of land and properties thereon.
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/46f2803d78a0488e852560c3006023a8!OpenDocument
262 (1968) Israel: Calls upon Israel to pay compensation to Lebanon for destruction of airliners at Beirut International Airport.
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/74cff7bff73f9ea1852560c30061d11b!OpenDocument
353 (1974) Turkey: Calls on nations to respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Cyprus and for the withdrawal without delay of foreign troops from Cyprus.
www.pio.gov.cy/docs/un/security_council/res_353.htm (http://www.pio.gov.cy/docs/un/security_council/res_353.htm)
379 (1975) Morocco: Calls for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Western Sahara.
www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm (http://www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm)
446 (1979) Israel: Calls upon Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying powers, to rescind previous measures that violate these relevant provisions, and “in particular, not to transport parts of its civilian population into the occupied Arab territories.”
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/ba123cded3ea84a5852560e50077c2dc!OpenDocument
465 (1980) Israel: Calls on Israel “to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction and planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.”
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/5aa254a1c8f8b1cb852560e50075d7d5!OpenDocument
471 (1980) Israel: Demands prosecution of those involved in assassination attempts of West Bank leaders and compensation for damages; reiterates demands to abide by Fourth Geneva Convention.
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/aa73b02d9b0d8fdc852560e50074cc33!OpenDocument
487 (1981) Israel: Condemns Israel for attacking Iraqi nuclear facility and calls upon Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/6c57312cc8bd93ca852560df00653995!OpenDocument
497 (1981) Israel: Demands that Israel rescind its decision to impose its domestic laws in the occupied Syrian Golan region.
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/73d6b4c70d1a92b7852560df0064f101!OpenDocument
541 (1983) Turkey: Reiterates the need for compliance with prior resolutions and demands that the declaration of an independent Turkish Cypriot state be withdrawn.
www.pio.gov.cy/docs/un/security_council/res_541.htm (http://www.pio.gov.cy/docs/un/security_council/res_541.htm)
573 (1985) Israel: Calls on Israel to pay compensation for human and material losses from its attack against Tunisia and to refrain from all such attacks or threats of attacks against other nations.
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/504b1c4724edee94852560df00628b87!OpenDocument
658 (1990) Morocco: Calls upon Morocco to “cooperate fully” with the Secretary General of the United Nations and the chairman of the Organization of African Unity “in their efforts aimed at an early settlement of the question of Western Sahara.”
www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm (http://www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm)
690 (1991) Morocco: Calls upon both parties to cooperate fully with the Secretary General in implementing a referendum on the fate of the territory.
www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm (http://www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm)
799 (1992) Israel: “Reaffirms applicability of Fourth Geneva Convention…to all Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, and affirms that deportation of civilians constitutes a contravention of its obligations under the Convention.”
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/d7e7a668894b0455852560dd0062d041!OpenDocument
809 (1993) Morocco: Reiterates call to cooperate with the peace settlement plan, particularly regarding voter eligibility for referendum.
www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm (http://www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm)
904 (1994) Israel: Calls upon Israel, as the occupying power, “to take and implement measures, inter alia, confiscation of arms, with the aim of preventing illegal acts of violence by settlers.”
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/4690652a351277438525634c006dce10!OpenDocument
973 (1995) Morocco: Reiterates the need for cooperation with United Nations and expediting referendum on the fate of Western Sahara.
www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm (http://www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm)
995 (1995) Morocco: Calls for “genuine cooperation” with UN efforts to move forward with a referendum.
www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm (http://www.accuracy.org/sahara.htm)
1056 (1996) Morocco: Calls for the release of political prisoners from occupied Western Sahara.
www1.umn.edu/humanrts/resolutions/SC96/1056SC96.html (http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/resolutions/SC96/1056SC96.html)
1092 (1996) Turkey/Cyprus: Calls for a reduction of foreign troops in Cyprus as the first step toward a total withdrawal of troops as well as a reduction in military spending.
www.pio.gov.cy/docs/un/security_council/res_1092.htm (http://www.pio.gov.cy/docs/un/security_council/res_1092.htm)
1272 (1999) Indonesia: Stresses the need for Indonesia to provide for the safe return for refugees and maintain the civilian and humanitarian character of refugee camps.
www.hri.ca/fortherecord1999/documentation/security/s-res-1272.htm (http://www.hri.ca/fortherecord1999/documentation/security/s-res-1272.htm)
1319 (2000) Indonesia: Insists that Indonesia “take immediate additional steps, in fulfillment of its responsibilities, to disarm and disband the militia immediately, restore law and order in the affected areas of West Timor…”
http://domino.un.org/etelec.nsf/54d92df0afaf2fe585256a520065a83c/a000e8dec63de98149256a6f0005fc2c!OpenDocument
1359 (2001) Morocco: Calls on the parties to “abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law to release without further delay all those held since the start of the conflict.”
www.hri.ca/fortherecord2001/documentation/security/s-res-1359.htm (http://www.hri.ca/fortherecord2001/documentation/security/s-res-1359.htm)
1405 (2002) Israel: Calls for UN inspectors to investigate civilian deaths during an Israeli assault on the Jenin refugee camp.
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/9d8245ad174f11d785256ba3004c8663!OpenDocument
1435 (2002) Israel: Calls on Israel to withdraw to positions of September 2000 and end its military activities in and around Ramallah, including the destruction of security and civilian infrastructure.
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/2557b4ed9525563485256c3f004bbf4e!OpenDocument

http://www.accuracy.org/1026-un-security-council-resolutions-being-violated-by-u-s-allies/

The point here is not to say that these countries should be attacked AS WELL, but that violation of resolutions does not by default mandate give an excuse for an invasion.

revelarts

02-08-2016, 11:07 AM

Does the U.S. even Keep it's International agreements on Weapons and Disarmament?

"In 1997 the US agreed to decommission the 31,000 tons of sarin, VX, mustard gas and other agents it possessed within 10 years. In 2007 it requested the maximum extension of the deadline permitted by the Chemical Weapons Convention — five years. Again it failed to keep its promise, and in 2012 it claimed they would be gone by 2021."

................

"U.S. Signs International Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty
In 1997, the United States ratified the United Nations International Chemical Weapons Convention treaty. By participating in the treaty, the United States agreed to destroy its stockpile of aging chemical weapons—principally mustard agent and nerve agents—by April 29, 2007. However, the final destruction deadline was extended to April 29, 2012, at the Eleventh Session of the Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention at The Hague on December 8, 2006."

...............

"7. Work not done: 90% of the U.S. stockpile -- 30,500 tons -- was destroyed by the treaty date in 2012 at depots in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon, Utah and Johnson Atoll in the Pacific. The remaining 10% -- close to 3,100 tons -- is at two sites in Colorado and Kentucky."
Updated 1:31 PM ET, Tue March 17, 2015

................

....In drafting the domestic legislation to ratify and implement the CWC, Congress and the Clinton administration included three unilateral exemptions that have undermined the multilateral treaty by creating a separate set of rules for the United States. The most damaging provision allows a U.S. president to refuse an on-site inspection by the OPCW on the grounds that it could pose a threat to national security. A second exemption prohibits the removal of chemical samples from U.S. territory for detailed analysis at independent laboratories overseas. The third exemption sharply limits the number of U.S. chemical facilities subject to declaration and routine inspection. These unilateral U.S. provisions have been serious impediments to effective implementation of the CWC, both because they violate the nondiscriminatory spirit of the treaty and because they set a bad example that other countries have begun to follow. Although Clinton administration officials sought to play down the impact of the exemptions, they have clearly had a corrosive effect. Several foreign governments have taken note of the provisions and some, such as India and Russia, have initiated steps to duplicate them....

................

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/17/us/chemical-weapons-pueblo-debot/

http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/demil/history.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention#Timeline_of_destructio n

http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2001_04/tucker
............

the point here is that Saddam similarly was in the process of and the inspectors said that they could have satisfyingly accounted for all the "missing" Iraqi weapons in a few more months.
The U.S. has taken Years over the "deadlines" to fulfill it's agreement, And told other countries they could not inspect our facilities.
as i said i nthe 1st post.
If you want to say that the U.S. SHOULD just be a gangster OK own that. but let not pretend that Saddam did something SO HORRIBLE and OUTRAGOUES that it he HAD to be crushed ASAP.
especially when we've done similar.

And BTW personally i AGREE that we shouldn't allow foreign inspectors in our arms plants.
and If i were a leader of a foreign country I'd believe the same.

---BUT BUT SADDAM WASN"T Cooperating and we had no idea when it'd be finished-- you say?
No. before the war began the U.N. inspectors said this.

Blix in March

"Inspections in Iraq resumed on 27 November 2002. In matters relating to process, notably prompt access to sites, we have faced relatively few difficulties and certainly much less than those that were faced by UNSCOM in the period 1991 to 1998. "

"As of today, there is more. While during our meetings in Baghdad, the Iraqi side tried to persuade us that the Al Samoud 2 missiles they have declared fall within the permissible range set by the Security Council, the calculations of an international panel of experts led us to the opposite conclusion. Iraq has since accepted that these missiles and associated items be destroyed and has started the process of destruction under our supervision. The destruction undertaken constitutes a substantial measure of disarmament – indeed, the first since the middle of the 1990s. We are not watching the breaking of toothpicks. Lethal weapons are being destroyed....

To date, 34 Al Samoud 2 missiles, including 4 training missiles, 2 combat warheads, 1 launcher and 5 engines have been destroyed under UNMOVIC supervision. Work is continuing to identify and inventory the parts and equipment associated with the Al Samoud 2 programme.

Two ‘reconstituted’ casting chambers used in the production of solid propellant missiles have been destroyed and the remnants melted or encased in concrete.

The legality of the Al Fatah missile is still under review, pending further investigation and measurement of various parameters of that missile.

More papers on anthrax, VX and missiles have recently been provided. Many have been found to restate what Iraq had already declared, some will require further study and discussion.

...here is a significant Iraqi effort underway to clarify a major source of uncertainty as to the quantities of biological and chemical weapons, which were unilaterally destroyed in 1991. A part of this effort concerns a disposal site, which was deemed too dangerous for full investigation in the past. It is now being re-excavated. To date, Iraq has unearthed eight complete bombs comprising two liquid-filled intact R-400 bombs and six other complete bombs. Bomb fragments were also found. Samples have been taken. The investigation of the destruction site could, in the best case, allow the determination of the number of bombs destroyed at that site. It should be followed by a serious and credible effort to determine the separate issue of how many R-400 type bombs were produced. In this, as in other matters, inspection work is moving on and may yield results....

...Resolution 1284 (1999) instructs UNMOVIC to “address unresolved disarmament issues” and to identify “key remaining disarmament tasks” and the latter are to be submitted for approval by the Council in the context of a work programme. UNMOVIC will be ready to submit a draft work programme this month as required.....

...I should note that the working document contains much information and discussion about the issues which existed at the end of 1998 – including information which has come to light after 1998. It contains much less information and discussion about the period after 1998, primarily because of paucity of information. Nevertheless, intelligence agencies have expressed the view that proscribed programmes have continued or restarted in this period. It is further contended that proscribed programmes and items are located in underground facilities, as I mentioned, and that proscribed items are being moved around Iraq. The working document contains some suggestions on how these concerns may be tackled. ....

....Let me conclude by telling you that UNMOVIC is currently drafting the work programme, which resolution 1284 (1999) requires us to submit this month. It will obviously contain our proposed list of key remaining disarmament tasks; it will describe the reinforced system of ongoing monitoring and verification that the Council has asked us to implement; it will also describe the various subsystems which constitute the programme, e.g. for aerial surveillance, for information from governments and suppliers, for sampling, for the checking of road traffic, etc.

How much time would it take to resolve the key remaining disarmament tasks? While cooperation can and is to be immediate, disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant. Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months. Neither governments nor inspectors would want disarmament inspection to go on forever. However, it must be remembered that in accordance with the governing resolutions, a sustained inspection and monitoring system is to remain in place after verified disarmament to give confidence and to strike an alarm, if signs were seen of the revival of any proscribed weapons programmes."
http://www.un.org/depts/unmovic/SC7asdelivered.htm

Black Diamond

02-08-2016, 12:00 PM

Saddam said in his jail cell he wanted Iran to BELIEVE he had WMDs. That makes the most sense to me.

revelarts

02-23-2016, 05:35 PM

Not trying to start anything ... Just FYI again

It seems there were multiple reasons for war... it wasn't about "freedom" or WmDs
1. See the memo that surfaced (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/secret-memos-expose-link-between-oil-firms-and-invasion-of-iraq-2269610.html) about the oil companies all getting their cuts after the US UK invasion. (more Mentioned in other links (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/03/top-republican-leaders-say-iraq-war-was-really-for-oil.html) as well) (the timing puts the lie to the U.N. dancing going on then. Before Blixs U.N. Final WMD report. Before Powells Speech to the U.N.. War was a done deal. Oil a strategic target.)
2. Saddam was threatening to begin selling oil in euros rather than dollars. killed. A Huge problem, BTW Kadafi made the same "threat".
3. We have multiple "enduring" military bases in Iraq now.
4. And an embassy "larger than the Vatican".
5. A militarily strategic local in the middle east. To help Israel... and protect the oil flow in the region
6. the American Military industrial complex and friends of Cheney and crew have made BILLIONS/Trillions? from Iraq.
7. Saddam didn't make nice with Israel. killed.
8. the Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs thought it would be easy to rule the world. But they are still trying.

<tbody>
Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms.

From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West's largest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran before becoming George W. Bush's running mate in 2000.
CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/)

</tbody>

Bush Sr. was direct
"We need the oil. It's nice to talk about standing up for freedom. But Kuwait and Saudi Arabia aren't exactly democracies."
TIME' magazine , August 20th , 1990

"Bush said extremists controlling Iraq 'would use energy as economic blackmail" and try to pressure the United States to abandon its alliance with Israel. At a stop in Missouri on Friday, he suggested that such radicals would be 'able to pull millions of barrels of oil off the market, driving the price up to $300 or $400 a barrel.' Oil is not the only reason Bush offers for staying in Iraq, but his comments on the stump represent another striking evolution of his argument on behalf of the war. "
Wash-Post
Bush Says U.S. Pullout Would Let Iraq Radicals Use Oil as a Weapon (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/04/AR2006110401025.html)

"The man once regarded as the world's most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was 'largely' about oil.
Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and retired last year after serving four presidents, Alan Greenspan has been the leading Republican economist for a generation and his utterings instantly moved world markets. In his long-awaited memoir - out tomorrow in the US - Greenspan, 81, who served as chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, writes: 'I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.'"

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel said of the Iraq war in 2007:
"People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are. They talk about America’s national interest. What the hell do you think they’re talking about? We’re not there for figs."

4 Star General John Abizaid – the former commander of CENTCOM with responsibility for Iraq – said:
"Of course it’s about oil, it’s very much about oil, and we can’t really deny that."

John McCain said in 2008:
"My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East."

Sarah Palin said in 2008:
"Better to start that drilling [for oil within the U.S.] today than wait and continue relying on foreign sources of energy. We are a nation at war and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources, which is nonsensical when you consider that domestically we have the supplies ready to go."

FormerUnder Secretary of State, John Bolton said:
"The critical oil and natural gas producing region that we fought so many wars to try and protectour economy from the adverse impact of losing that supply or having it available only at very high prices."

Top REPUBLICAN Leaders Say Iraq War Was Really about Oil Washington's Blog (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/03/top-republican-leaders-say-iraq-war-was-really-for-oil.html)

Black Diamond

02-23-2016, 06:55 PM

revelarts

02-23-2016, 07:25 PM

The Bush administration was in conflict with itself. Rice wanted the Niger portion stricken from Bush's speech. She was overruled by Cheney, whatever that means.

Then you had Cheney implicitly contradicting the President on meet the press re al Qaeda connection.

Still I don't know that there is evidence Bush LIED about weapons. I think Saddam fooled him and the rest of the world, particularly Iran, into thinking he had weapons.

At 1st i thought it was just a series of mistakes but after seeing things like the downing st memo, the pre-war oil plans, and testimony from people inside U.S. and British intel agencies saying they made clear that the intel was bad/old/wrong but it just kept getting repeated by the Bush admin anyway... well at that point i turned the corner.

Elessar

02-23-2016, 07:50 PM

Drummond

02-23-2016, 07:55 PM

Having fun, Revelarts ?

The 2003 Iraq invasion was mandated, following Saddam's final refusal to cooperate with UN Resolution 1441. Had this not occurred, every tinpot dictator imaginable would've seen that they could stockpile whatever WMD's they felt like stockpiling, FREE from any degree of preventative censure. From Saddam, to Gaddafi, to anyone else.

Saddam's regime was a particularly maverick and belligerent one. Iran had been fought against. Kuwait had been invaded. The Kurds had been gassed by a WMD. There was therefore no question that Saddam could possibly be 'trusted' with any such arsenal. This also knocks the argument about 'respecting others' sovereignty' on the head, because Saddam did none of that !!

As for 'who provided Saddam with any WMD's' .. OK. An argument 'proving' America's culpability, THEREFORE argues that America takes responsibility for the outcome of it !! Therefore, Revelarts, it seems to me that the 2003 invasion was an eminently responsible action to take !!

Revelarts - once and for all !! - will you PLEASE tell me why the Left was so very determined to protect Saddam, and his brutal regime, from attack, and to foist a 'blame game' 'guilt trip' for anyone DARING to .. ??

revelarts

02-23-2016, 09:54 PM

Here Rev.
Remember this?
You put up 4 plates of liberal whining.
Feast on these:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/mostert/040816
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://rightwingnews.com/quotes/if-the-bush-administration-lied-about-wmd-so-did-these-people-version-3-0/
You and all whiners are full of crap and blinded by Liberal Bullshit. You deny
that the Nation stood United. The initial Intel may have been bad, but findings
show there was reason to eradicate that scourge.
Evidence was found of WMD...videos showed much was carted off
to Syria. But liberals deny it.
Bill Clinton had a chance to cut off the heads of the snakes (Saddam and Osama).
He refused to do so, just opted to shoot some cruise missiles.

"If Bush lied about WMD, Kerry and 77% of the Senate lied also"
well .., if that what you want to go with that , OK, i won't disagree much with you.
if you really want to press it that far.

Look the thing for me is what did anyone know BEFORE they cried Wolf/WMD. left right i don't care. a lie is a lie as far as i'm concerned.
But I haven't tried to check what EVERYONE knew before hand. My focus was the band leaders not the backup players.
And as i said from , the downing st memo, the pre-war oil deals and the especially the testimonies from the people inside the the OUR OWN U.S. and UK intel agencies. it makes a reasonable and powerful case that Bush Chenney and Rumsfeild Did know very well. They had 1st hand knowledge of the BEST of the intel. And as the downing st memo states they deliberately meant to "fix" the intel to the policy, not the other way round.
From what i can tell of others, well it seems General Powell and Colonel Wilkerson didn't have access to all the info that W, Dick and Rummy had.
But Tennent knew better and he was Powell's source and Wilkerson said Tennent lied "mislead" them both. Rice I don't know, she probably knew. Pelosi COULD have known better but i suspect she was too ignorant to check or didn't WANT to know. Kerry I have no good evidence, but he's been an inside man and a player for a long time, I bet he knew exactly what was going on even if he didn't know the details. The other Ds i don't know enough to say what they knew or when.

But look if you think they all knew before hand as well and just played along with Bush and crew because they didn't want to look weak or wanted their cut or something, hey you could be right. But I can't say for sure with them. I just haven't seen as much info as i have on W and crew to say as definitively.

concerning the 199-X claims of WMDs.. yes but Powell and Rice in 2000/1 said that Saddam was "NOT a threat" that he'd been "contained" and could not even "project" much against his neighbors. much less the U.S.. and by 2002 the U.N. inspectors said they could find or determine if there were any thing of significance left "in months not years" of work... before and without an invasion.

Look, as it stands we found no "on going" nuke or wmd programs or anything close to the over hyped estimates of WMD's.
Mainly old canisters of stuff the U.S. sold him.
Everything else was all fabrication or at best exaggeration on W's and crews part.

if you think otherwise well, ok, we disagree.

revelarts

02-23-2016, 11:57 PM

Having fun, Revelarts ?
just collecting some info.

The 2003 Iraq invasion was mandated, following Saddam's final refusal to cooperate with UN Resolution 1441. Had this not occurred, every tinpot dictator imaginable would've seen that they could stockpile whatever WMD's they felt like stockpiling, FREE from any degree of preventative censure. From Saddam, to Gaddafi, to anyone else. As mentioned above many a country refuse/fail to cooperate with UN resolutions. including the U.S. and the UK. that doesn't "mandate" invasion. never has before. the "Bush doctrine" of preemptive preventative invasions is NEW, and it used to be just called .. well invasion.

Saddam's regime was a particularly maverick and belligerent one. Iran had been fought against. Kuwait had been invaded. The Kurds had been gassed by a WMD. There was therefore no question that Saddam could possibly be 'trusted' with any such arsenal. This also knocks the argument about 'respecting others' sovereignty' on the head, because Saddam did none of that !!
Saddam was a Bad guy so were many others. can the Saudis or Turks or be trusted with the billions in arms we've given them?.
And Saddam didn't have at the arsenal W claimed that's the point.
Sovereignty is ether respected or it's not. the geneva convention which we wrote goes into that a bit.
pretending that Saddam's threat rose ABOVE national sovereignty and the geneva conventions rules of war is just not realistic at all.

As for 'who provided Saddam with any WMD's' .. OK. An argument 'proving' America's culpability, THEREFORE argues that America takes responsibility for the outcome of it !! Therefore, Revelarts, it seems to me that the 2003 invasion was an eminently responsible action to take !!
If there we're enough, If they were new, if he had any real way to deploy them against anyone, if he had real plans to do so, if he tried to attack anyone again after he was FAR weaker with LESS WMD's than he had in 91' and weaker as a country in nearly every way MAYBE it'd make sense but..
yeah no.

Revelarts - once and for all !! - will you PLEASE tell me why the Left was so very determined to protect Saddam, and his brutal regime, from attack, and to foist a 'blame game' 'guilt trip' for anyone DARING to .. ??
you'd have to ask someone on the left. They won't claim me no matter how much you try to paste that label on me. it just won't stick.
Drummond There are many brutal regimes all over the planet today. which ones do you want american soldiers to attack? how many billions do you want our country to spend?
It's not a blame game it's trying to look at the facts and see if we are being honest, and the MORAL leaders of the world we claim to be or more similar to imperialist bullies.

the question is not, was Saddam was a bad guy?
that answer has always been yes.

it's, were our leaders honest getting us into war?
the answer is no

it's, was the war a good idea and justified anyway?
the answer is no.

Was the war necessary?
the answer is no.

Has the world or even the M.E. been made a better place overall because of the war?
the answer is no.

Was Iraq or Saddam worth the billions(trillions?) U.S. dollars being spent there even to this day?
the answer is no.

was Iraq or Saddam worth the broken minds, bodies and deaths of the thousands of U.S. and UK military?
I say the answer is definitely no.

jimnyc

02-24-2016, 04:21 AM

I'm wondering how 77% of those folks knew enough to lie - and lie with pretty much the same story as GWB - who had not even took office when most of them made their comments? Or did Bush take their lies and run with it? :dunno:

Drummond

02-24-2016, 06:27 AM

just collecting some info.

.. that just happens to fit your agenda .. to the extent it genuinely does (??).

As mentioned above many a country refuse/fail to cooperate with UN resolutions. including the U.S. and the UK. that doesn't "mandate" invasion. never has before.

How many of these countries you 'have in mind' have belligerently invaded their neighbours ? How many have hated Israel, and wanted her destroyed ? How many have sheltered any senior Al Qaeda operatives ? How many have deployed a WMD, against the Kurds, for example ?

Saddam couldn't possibly be trusted with a WMD arsenal, as he ultimately proved. He and his maverick regime HAD to be neutralised. And, if 'not' .. just how very low do you set the bar, before you decide that action must be taken ??

the "Bush doctrine" of preemptive preventative invasions is NEW, and it used to be just called .. well invasion.

I've no quarrel with that. So what ? The action WAS NECESSARY.

Saddam was a Bad guy so were many others. can the Saudis or Turks or be trusted with the billions in arms we've given them?

Being careful with your words here, Revelarts ? Arms, or, WMD'S ?

And Saddam didn't have at the arsenal W claimed that's the point.

You simultaneously query America's supply of them, yet also do the bog standard Leftie thing of pushing the idea that Saddam couldn't possibly have had any ! Really, that makes no sense at all. And not finding something (even despite the 500+ old ones which WERE found !!) .. proves NOTHING about their nonexistence.

Sovereignty is ether respected or it's not. the geneva convention which we wrote goes into that a bit.

Was the intention behind the Geneva Convention to protect belligerents ?

Perhaps you'd have supported the idea of, in WWII, Allied forces stopping at the German border, and not entering that country ??

If there we're enough, If they were new, if he had any real way to deploy them against anyone, if he had real plans to do so, if he tried to attack anyone again after he was FAR weaker with LESS WMD's than he had in 91' and weaker as a country in nearly every way MAYBE it'd make sense but..
yeah no.

Wasn't part of the point of the invasion to CHECK THAT OUT ?? The point was, Revelarts, that Saddam refused to give accurate, clear accounts either of stocks, or their dispositions !!

you'd have to ask someone on the left. They won't claim me no matter how much you try to paste that label on me. it just won't stick.

You argue as a Leftie would. If you don't want to be perceived as one, then obviously, don't argue as one !!

Drummond There are many brutal regimes all over the planet today. which ones do you want american soldiers to attack? how many billions do you want our country to spend?

OK. Here's a thought for you. A few years further down the line, let's say N Korea managed to launch a fully viable long range nuclear missile, AND, it got through to wipe out an American city. You can't say with total, 100 percent confidence that it CAN'T happen !

Assume it's happened, for the sake of argument. What value would you, then, place on your talk of 'billions America might've spent on preventing such a disaster' ?

It's not a blame game it's trying to look at the facts and see if we are being honest, and the MORAL leaders of the world we claim to be or more similar to imperialist bullies.

Were you being 'imperialist bullies' when you smashed the Third Reich ? There are times, Revelarts, when you DO what you must DO.

the question is not, was Saddam was a bad guy?
that answer has always been yes.

.. but it took a while to confirm. However, action was, ultimately, taken. Which you don't like !!

it's, were our leaders honest getting us into war?
the answer is no

A serious charge. You need to PROVE they comprehensively lied to make that charge stick. You've yet to do so.

it's, was the war a good idea and justified anyway?
the answer is no.

Tinpot dictators with massive WMD arsenals is BETTER, then ???

Was the war necessary?
the answer is no.

Dream on. And see above.

Has the world or even the M.E. been made a better place overall because of the war?
the answer is no.

CRAP. Again, see above !

Was Iraq or Saddam worth the billions(trillions?) U.S. dollars being spent there even to this day?
the answer is no.

The world could've been taught the lesson that WMD arsenals will never be challenged, or questioned, no matter who has them ???

--- And you're NOT a Leftie ????????

was Iraq or Saddam worth the broken minds, bodies and deaths of the thousands of U.S. and UK military?
I say the answer is definitely no.

Prove to me that mere bombing runs could've dealt with the outstanding WMD issue in Iraq, then ....

revelarts

02-24-2016, 08:29 AM

.. that just happens to fit your agenda .. to the extent it genuinely does (??).
How many of these countries you 'have in mind' have belligerently invaded their neighbours ? How many have hated Israel, and wanted her destroyed ? How many have sheltered any senior Al Qaeda operatives ? How many have deployed a WMD, against the Kurds, for example ?
Saddam couldn't possibly be trusted with a WMD arsenal, as he ultimately proved. He and his maverick regime HAD to be neutralised. And, if 'not' .. just how very low do you set the bar, before you decide that action must be taken ??
I've no quarrel with that. So what ? The action WAS NECESSARY.
Being careful with your words here, Revelarts ? Arms, or, WMD'S ?
You simultaneously query America's supply of them, yet also do the bog standard Leftie thing of pushing the idea that Saddam couldn't possibly have had any ! Really, that makes no sense at all. And not finding something (even despite the 500+ old ones which WERE found !!) .. proves NOTHING about their nonexistence.
Was the intention behind the Geneva Convention to protect belligerents ?
Perhaps you'd have supported the idea of, in WWII, Allied forces stopping at the German border, and not entering that country ??
Wasn't part of the point of the invasion to CHECK THAT OUT ?? The point was, Revelarts, that Saddam refused to give accurate, clear accounts either of stocks, or their dispositions !!
You argue as a Leftie would. If you don't want to be perceived as one, then obviously, don't argue as one !!
OK. Here's a thought for you. A few years further down the line, let's say N Korea managed to launch a fully viable long range nuclear missile, AND, it got through to wipe out an American city. You can't say with total, 100 percent confidence that it CAN'T happen !
Assume it's happened, for the sake of argument. What value would you, then, place on your talk of 'billions America might've spent on preventing such a disaster' ?
Were you being 'imperialist bullies' when you smashed the Third Reich ? There are times, Revelarts, when you DO what you must DO.
.. but it took a while to confirm. However, action was, ultimately, taken. Which you don't like !!
A serious charge. You need to PROVE they comprehensively lied to make that charge stick. You've yet to do so.
Tinpot dictators with massive WMD arsenals is BETTER, then ???
Dream on. And see above.
CRAP. Again, see above !
The world could've been taught the lesson that WMD arsenals will never be challenged, or questioned, no matter who has them ???
--- And you're NOT a Leftie ????????
[/I]
Prove to me that mere bombing runs could've dealt with the outstanding WMD issue in Iraq, then ....

we disagree

Kathianne

02-24-2016, 08:32 AM

we disagree

Join the rest of us lefties. Company is pretty decent.

revelarts

02-24-2016, 08:45 AM

for the record

The Bush administration commissioned the Iraq Survey Group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Survey_Group) to determine whether in fact any WMD existed in Iraq. After a year and half of meticulously combing through the country, the administration’s own inspectors reported:[15] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1441#ci te_note-15)
<tbody>
“
"While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."
”

</tbody>

The review was conducted by Charles A. Duelfer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_A._Duelfer) and the Iraq Survey Group. In October 2004, Bush said of Duelfer’s analysis:[16] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1441#ci te_note-16) "The chief weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, has now issued a comprehensive report that confirms the earlier conclusion of David Kay that Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...1441#Aftermath (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1441#Af termath) (link provided by FJ)

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...l-weapons.html (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html) (link provided by Drummond BTW)
OLD PRE-1991 weapons found

...
The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West.
...
The discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims.
Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.
All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.
In case after case, participants said, analysis of these warheads and shells reaffirmed intelligence failures. First, the American government did not find what it had been looking for at the war’s outset, then it failed to prepare its troops and medical corps for the aged weapons it did find.
...

from the article:
"...Others pointed to another embarrassment. In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies...."
"....Iraq produced 10 metric tons of mustard blister agent in 1981; by 1987 its production had grown 90-fold, with late-war output aided by two American companies that provided hundreds of tons of thiodiglycol, a mustard agent precursor. Production of nerve agents also took off...."
"....
...the American Army made its largest chemical weapons find of the war: more than 2,400 Borak rockets....
... The rockets appeared to have been buried before American airstrikes in 1991, he said. Many were empty. Others still contained sarin. “Full-up sloshers,” he said....
...These shells, which the American military calls M110s, had been developed decades ago in the United States. Roughly two feet long and weighing more than 90 pounds, each is an aerodynamic steel vessel with a burster tube in its center.
The United States has long manufactured M110s, filling them with smoke compounds, white phosphorus or, in earlier years, mustard agent. American ordnance documents explicitly describe the purpose of an M110 filled with blister agent: “to produce a toxic effect on personnel and to contaminate habitable areas.”....

revelarts

02-24-2016, 09:15 AM

WHO KNEW WHAT and WHEN

UK Iraq dossier drawn up to make up a case for war – say UK intelligence officer.
Newly released evidence to Chilcot inquiry directly contradicts Blair government's claims about dossier
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...r-case-for-war (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/12/iraq-dossier-case-for-war)

A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq's weapons programme was drawn up "to make the case for war", flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular by Alastair Campbell, the former prime minister's chief spin doctor.

In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: "We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care."

His evidence is devastating, as it is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the then government's claims about the dossier – and, perhaps more significantly, what Tony Blair and Campbell said when it was released seven months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Laurie, who was director general in the Defence Intelligence Staff, responsible for commanding and delivering raw and analysed intelligence, said: "I am writing to comment on the position taken by Alastair Campbell during his evidence to you … when he stated that the purpose of the dossier was not to make a case for war; I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given."

He continued: "Alastair Campbell said to the inquiry that the purpose of the dossier was not 'to make a case for war'. I had no doubt at that time this was exactly its purpose and these very words were used."...

Gen. Colin Powell feb 2001 early 2001 "Sanctions have kept Iraq weak. They are not able to project power. The Iraqi army is about forty...thirty-five to forty percent of its original size. It is not a threat to Kuwait in my judgement."

" ...And frankly they (Sanctions) have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq…"

...................

CBS NEWS
Former Top CIA Official On "Faulty" Intelligence Claims

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...in;contentBody (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749_page2.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBod y)
Drumheller was the CIA's top man in Europe, the head of covert operations there, until he retired a year ago. He says he saw firsthand how the White House promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn’t:

"The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen one way or the other," says Drumheller.

Drumheller says he doesn't think it mattered very much to the administration what the intelligence community had to say. "I think it mattered it if verified. This basic belief that had taken hold in the U.S. government that now is the time, we had the means, all we needed was the will," he says….

Ex-CIA intelligence officer Larry Johnson responded to comments by former CIA Director George Tenet which aired on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday. Tenet said the consensus in the U.S. intelligence community was that Iraq did possess WMD, which the Bush administration said was its reason for invading in March of 2003.
Johnson told CNN on Monday that although Tenet knew intelligence indicating that Iraq had WMD "was a problem," he still played a role in the Bush administration's message to the American people that Iraq was a threat.

"In fall of 2002, he was told specifically that there was a high level source in Saddam's government that was saying, 'We don't have WMD,' " Johnson said. "George Tenet's hands are just as bloody as everybody else in this administration in helping gin up what was an unfounded case for war."

Johnson is a registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000.

Tenet, who's authored a new book on his tenure at CIA titled, "At the Center of the Storm," told CBS that he was outraged that senior officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, used Tenet's "slam dunk" reference to bolster Bush's decision to launch the war.

Johnson said Tenet "was willing to tell the president, 'Yeah I'll go out and help manipulate public opinion to build the case for war.' That's not the role of an intelligence chief. The role of the intelligence chief of the United States government is to tell the facts to the president and to the Congress regardless of what the political import of those are."

"He could have stood up and spoke out when he had the job," Johnston said Monday. "He could have changed the course of American history. Instead he kept silent."

The writers accused Tenet of having helped send "very mixed signals" to Americans and their legislators before the war.

"CIA field operatives produced solid intelligence in September 2002 that stated clearly there was no stockpile of any kind of WMD in Iraq," said the letter. "This intelligence was ignored and later misused." In addition to Johnson, the letter was signed by Phil Giraldi, Ray McGovern, Jim Marcinkowski, Vince Cannistraro and David MacMichael.
...

http://articles.cnn.com/2007-04-30/p..._s=PM:POLITICS (http://articles.cnn.com/2007-04-30/politics/tenet_1_cia-director-george-tenet-cia-officer-intelligence?_s=PM:POLITICS)

Former Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski assigned to the pentagon intel office

...back in May 2002, when as a Lt Colonel in the Air Force, I was assigned to the Near East South Asia office, the home of what would become the Office of Special Plans. What the Pentagon senior civilian staff and the President were saying about Iraq that summer did not match the intelligence I'd been looking at regularly for well over four years. Furthermore, it did not pass the logic test.

It appeared that a small group of people, politically appointed neoconservatives who missed the political clarity of the Cold War, and saw 9-11 as a "new Pearl Harbor," were itching for an invasion of Iraq.

Had I been paying attention, I would have known that these particular civilians had been itching for an invasion of Iraq for some time. Some had even been in government before the current regime, such as House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and former CIA Director James Woolsey. But I never suspected that the intelligence system would be corrupted to the extent it was in 2002, and that the mainstream media and leaders of both political parties would genuflect to a war president, and salivate at the thought of more war overseas.

I never thought that so many would lie so much, and so loudly, for so little. I was unfamiliar with the political process in Washington. I was unfamiliar with the fundamental nature of defense spending, and our long-term strategies for base building abroad. And lastly, I had never heard of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that had extremely close ties to many of the policy decision-makers overseeing Iraq invasion planning and propaganda, influence over a great many legislators in both parties, and at the time, was actively lobbying for an American toppling of Saddam Hussein.

I moved my retirement date up a few months and just after I retired, in July 2003, Knight-Ridder newspapers published an op-ed where I discussed the functional isolation of the policy-makers, their cross-agency cliques of likeminded ideologues, and the groupthink that afflicted them in the rush to war.

I realize today that I was far too kind...
http://www.c-span.org/video/?191631-1/qa-karen-kwiatkowski
http://www.democracynow.org/2005/6/29/fmr_pentagon_insider_blasts_bushs_iraq

On NBC's Meet the Press last Sunday, March 16, 2003, Vice President Cheney audaciously reiterated an ominous note.
NBC: "And even though the International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a nuclear program, we disagree?"

Cheney: "I disagree, yes. And you'll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of our intelligence community disagree. Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. We know that based on intelligence, that [Saddam] has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. El Baradei frankly is wrong."
------

After 218 inspections of 141 sites over three months by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei charged that the U.S. had used faked and erroneous evidence to support the claims that Iraq was importing enriched uranium and other material, notably the aluminum tubes and small magnets for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have, to date, found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq," the chief atomic weapons inspector had told the U.N. Security Council on Friday March 7, 2003.

revelarts

02-24-2016, 09:34 AM

New Yorker Magazine Article by Symour Hersh

http://www.debatepolicy.com/images/debate_policy/misc/quote_icon.png Originally Posted by New Yorker Magazine
They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal—a small cluster of policy advisers and analysts now based in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. In the past year, according to former and present Bush Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11, 2001, have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi. By last fall, the operation rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush’s main source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda. As of last week, no such weapons had been found. And although many people, within the Administration and outside it, profess confidence that something will turn up, the integrity of much of that intelligence is now in question….

the article goes on to

W. Patrick Lang, the former chief of Middle East intelligence at the D.I.A., said, “The Pentagon has banded together to dominate the government’s foreign policy, and they’ve pulled it off. They’re running Chalabi. The D.I.A. has been intimidated and beaten to a pulp. And there’s no guts at all in the C.I.A.”
Vincent Cannistraro, the former chief of counter-terrorism operations and analysis at the C.I.A., worked with Shulsky (OSP Boss) at a Washington think tank after his retirement. He said, “Abe is very gentle and slow to anger, with a sense of irony. But his politics were typical for his group—the Straussian view.” The group’s members, Cannistraro said, “reinforce each other because they’re the only friends they have, and they all work together. This has been going on since the nineteen-eighties, but they’ve never been able to coalesce as they have now. September 11th gave them the opportunity, and now they’re in heaven. They believe the intelligence is there. They want to believe it. It has to be there.”…
…In interviews, former C.I.A. officers and analysts described the agency as increasingly demoralized. “George knows he’s being beaten up,” one former officer said of George Tenet, the C.I.A. director. “And his analysts are terrified. George used to protect his people, but he’s been forced to do things their way.” Because the C.I.A.’s analysts are now on the defensive, “they write reports justifying their intelligence rather than saying what’s going on. The Defense Department and the Office of the Vice-President write their own pieces, based on their own ideology. We collect so much stuff that you can find anything you want.”…
…A former high-level intelligence official told me that American Special Forces units had been sent into Iraq in mid-March, before the start of the air and ground war, to investigate sites suspected of being missile or chemical- and biological-weapon storage depots. “They came up with nothing,” the official said. “Never found a single Scud.”…
…On April 22nd, Hans Blix, hours before he asked the U.N. Security Council to send his team back to Iraq, told the BBC, “I think it’s been one of the disturbing elements that so much of the intelligence on which the capitals built their case seemed to have been so shaky.”…

Patrick Lang, DIA
Patrick Lang, the former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence, said the Office of Special Plans "cherry-picked the intelligence stream" in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat. Lang said in interviews with several media outlets that the CIA had "no guts at all" to resist the allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by a Pentagon that he said was now dominating U.S. foreign policy.

"“I don’t have any problem with them bringing in a couple of people to take another look at the intelligence and challenge the assessments. But the problem is that they brought in people who were not intelligence professionals, people brought in because they thought like them. They knew what answers they were going to get.” [New York Times, 4/28/2004]"

That agency was "exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD," or weapons of mass destruction, he added in a phone interview. He said the CIA had "no guts at all" to resist the allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by a Pentagon that he said was now dominating U.S. foreign policy.

Vincent Cannistraro Head of CIA's counter-intelligence unit
“I think that early on in the administration—sometime within the first five to six months after Sept. 11, 2001—the decision was made that Iraq had to be dealt with. The intelligence community was tasked to collect information.” [ABC News, 6/16/2003]

“They are politicizing intelligence, no question about it. And they are undertaking a campaign to get George Tenet [the director of central intelligence] fired because they can’t get him to say what they want on Iraq.” [Washington Post, 10/25/2002]

“Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there’s a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA.” [Guardian, 10/9/2002]

“The [INC’s] intelligence isn’t reliable at all. Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear. And much of it is used to support Chalabi’s own presidential ambitions. They make no distinction between intelligence and propaganda, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, [creating] cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice-presidential speeches.” [Independent, 9/30/2003]

He told Reuters that “he knew of serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up ‘fraudulent’ intelligence” that had been acquired through the notorious Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. [Reuters, 5/30/2003]

Larry Johnson, CIA analyst
“We’ve entered the world of George Orwell. I’m disgusted. The truth has to be told. We can’t allow our leaders to use bogus information to justify war.” [Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 6/8/2003]

“By April of last year, I was beginning to pick up grumblings from friends inside the intelligence community that there had been pressure applied to analysts to come up with certain conclusions. Specifically, I was told that analysts were pressured to find an operational link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. One analyst, in particular, told me they were repeatedly pressured by the most senior officials in the Department of Defense.… In an e-mail exchange with another friend, I raised the possibility that ‘the Bush administration had bought into a lie.’ My friend, who works within the intelligence community, challenged me on the use of the word, ‘bought,’ and suggested instead that the Bush administration had created the lie.… I have spoken to more than two analysts who have expressed fear of retaliation if they come forward and tell what they know. We know that most of the reasons we were given for going to war were wrong.”

[B]Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, formerlythe director of policy planning at the State Department. .. he also served as the U.S. coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan and was senior director of Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.
frontline interview
"Was it necessary to go to war when we did?
"When we did, no. That was a question of choice. Obviously, you could have delayed it a day, a week, a month, a year. There was no necessity then. It wasn't as though the Iraqis were poised to suddenly do something or break out. So the decision to go to war -- which obviously was the president's decision -- like everything else about this war, was an elective decision."

Melvin A. Goodman Senior Analyst CIA Intell Specialist National war college
“To deny that there was any pressure on the intelligence community is just absurd.” [Reuters, 6/6/2003]
[ed: Goodman is referring here to the lectures he gives to intelligence analysts at the State Department’s Foreign Services Institute] “I get into the issue of politicization. They don’t say much during the question period, but afterwards people come up to me, DIA and CIA analysts who have had this pressure. I’ve gotten stories from DIA people being called into a supervisor’s office and told they might lose their job if they didn’t revise a paper. ‘This is not what the administration is looking for. You’ve got to find WMD’s, which are out there.’” [Vanity Fair, 5/2004]

Stansfield Turner, former director of CIA
“There is no question in my mind (policymakers) distorted the situation, either because they had bad intelligence or because they misinterpreted it.” [USA Today, 6/17/2003]

revelarts

02-24-2016, 09:41 AM

Head of MI-5 saying that she didn't think Iraq was a threat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6RPi5ud2FI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em6pY3DfFbM

curveball
the best source for WMD info was a known fraud
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...808,full.story (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-na-curveball20nov20,0,5362808,full.story)60 minutes
CIA Europe Head
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFki2zArXq4
Bush CIA Breifer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0HNE7coC-M

Gunny

02-24-2016, 11:09 AM

revelarts

02-24-2016, 11:52 AM

Yeah, please overlook the 800 lb gorilla in the room. We sold the damned WMDs to Saddam. Goes to figure we might know he has them. Minus THAT little detail, you could be right. Fact is, you aren't.
The only mistake we made was not sealing the Syrian border giving Saddam months to get rid of whatever he wanted to. Those WMDs are going to pop up and bite someone on the ass yet.
yes the sales and productions are mentioned in the above , ...from the 90's..

but the move to Syria of TONS of weapons, well that's another story that's been floated.
But please reread the intel officers quoted above. None mention this secret exodus. And if Bush knew of it why didn't he go after them since they were what he was concerned about rather than attack a country that "no longer"had them.

anyone found those mobile chemical bio weapons labs yet?

Gunny

02-24-2016, 11:56 AM

yes the sales and productions are mentioned in the above , ...from the 90's..

but the move to Syria of TONS of weapons, well that's another story that's been floated.
But please reread the intel officers quoted above. None mention this secret exodus. And if Bush knew of it why didn't he go after them since they were what he was concerned about rather than attack a country that "no longer"had them.

anyone found those mobile chemical bio weapons labs yet?

I hate to pull this one, but there are times when it's just called for:

I was there. You were ... WHERE exactly?

"No longer had them". Like the ones he didn't use on the Kurds? The fact is, the UN dipsticks were a face. A Marx Brothers movie makes more sense than inspecting only where Saddam allowed them to.

Black Diamond

02-24-2016, 11:58 AM

Black Diamond

02-24-2016, 12:00 PM

yes the sales and productions are mentioned in the above , ...from the 90's..

but the move to Syria of TONS of weapons, well that's another story that's been floated.
But please reread the intel officers quoted above. None mention this secret exodus. And if Bush knew of it why didn't he go after them since they were what he was concerned about rather than attack a country that "no longer"had them.

anyone found those mobile chemical bio weapons labs yet?
Everyone thought Saddam had weapons. Across political spectrum.. From Cheney to Chomsky.

Gunny

02-24-2016, 12:05 PM

Everyone thought Saddam had weapons. Across political spectrum.. From Cheney to Chomsky.

You mean those ones we provided him with as "dual use" farm materiel and the CIA taught his chemists how to refine them? The ones he used on both the Iranians and the Kurds? THOSE WMDs?

He used mustard gas on the Iranians and sarin on the Kurds. Google erasing the fact that it happened makes it no less so.

Black Diamond

02-24-2016, 12:07 PM

You mean those ones we provided him with as "dual use" farm materiel and the CIA taught his chemists how to refine them? The ones he used on both the Iranians and the Kurds? THOSE WMDs?

Yes. The joke around Washington was "We know he has weapons because we have the receipts".

Gunny

02-24-2016, 12:10 PM

Yes. The joke around Washington was "We know he has weapons because we have the receipts".

I was in Washington in the mid-90s. You got the joke right. :laugh:

revelarts

02-24-2016, 12:25 PM

Everyone thought Saddam had weapons. Across political spectrum.. From Cheney to Chomsky.

Yes. The joke around Washington was "We know he has weapons because we have the receipts".

And the joke from the Army Officer and Dr. who after Gulf W1 went around Iraq for a more than a year labeling and destroying tons of those WMD stashes is that he and many of his unit are sick and dying from doing that job.

again bottom line is by 2001-2002 the intel community and the key officials knew all that former stash of WMD crap was basically destroyed, the amounts were basically nill and that practically useless. AND that since Gulf W1 he had NOT "reconstituted" any WMD programs.
One of the UK officials RESIGNED and said as much at the beginning of the war.
And again to date we still haven't found all these TONS of WMDs folks.
and Now even Bush Chenney and Blair all admit the WMDs weren't there.
either they are lying now or they where lying then, choose what you like but you can't have it both ways.

"Now, look, I didn’t — part of the reason we went into Iraq was — the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn’t..."
GW Bush

Black Diamond

02-24-2016, 12:29 PM

Black Diamond

02-24-2016, 12:31 PM

False dichotomy. They could have made a mistake. Or at least Bush could have.

Or they could be in Syria and bush just decided not to bring up that possibility, instead conceding there weren't any. He didn't exactly exude strength.

revelarts

02-24-2016, 12:32 PM

False dichotomy. They could have made a mistake. Or at least Bush could have.
Like i said, from what i've seen it went past mistake.

Gunny

02-24-2016, 12:36 PM

And the joke from the Army Officer and Dr. who after Gulf W1 went around Iraq for a more than a year labeling and destroying tons of those WMD stashes is that he and many of his unit are sick and dying from doing that job.

again bottom line is by 2001-2002 the intel community and the key officials knew all that former stash of WMD crap was basically nill, the destroyed, the amounts were basically bill and that practically useless. AND that since Gulf W1 he had NOT "reconstituted" any WMD programs.
One of the UK officials RESIGNED and said as much at the begging of the war.
And again to date we still haven't found all these TONS of WMDs folks.
and Now even Bush Chenney and Blair all admit the WMDs weren't their.
either they are lying now or they where lying then, choose what you like but you can't have it both ways.

"Now, look, I didn’t — part of the reason we went into Iraq was — the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn’t..."
GW Bush

Bottom line is, you don't know what you're talking about. I was in the First Gulf War. We didn't go more than 25 miles into Iraq. SO whoever you think went around destroying WMDs must have been phantoms.

Bush, Blair and Cheney did not admit the WMDs weren't there. They admitted they didn't find them. Completely different scenarios.

In either case, why is it it takes a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 to wake people like you up? You're all outraged, you cry for the government to do something, then when they do, you spend 15 years bitching about what YOU asked for. Why on Earth do ostriches like you stick your head in the sand and pretend the bad guys aren't bad guys because they aren't in your back yard? I'd much rather take them out in THEIR yard before they get any traction.

Then there're a people like you with the lamest of lame arguments. You can't get around the fact we sold the WMDs to Saddam and he DID use them. End of story.

Besides all that, how about you catch up to speed? Bush isn't running for President. He hasn't been President for over 7 years. Why is it we couldn't dare question Clinton the day Bush was declared winner (before he even took office) and everything became his fault and 7 years later of Obama it's STILL Bush's fault? I suppose ISIS is Bush's fault when it didn't even exist during his administration?

revelarts

02-24-2016, 01:25 PM

Besides all that, how about you catch up to speed? Bush isn't running for President. He hasn't been President for over 7 years. Why is it we couldn't dare question Clinton the day Bush was declared winner (before he even took office) and everything became his fault and 7 years later of Obama it's STILL Bush's fault? I suppose ISIS is Bush's fault when it didn't even exist during his administration?
I started the thread after Trump was questioned/rebuked on his comment that Bush lied about the war etc.
and BTW Isis in Iraq is made up of Saddams former Bathist troops that Bush fired all at once leaving them without jobs and nothing to do but be pissed at america.
Clinton could have kiled Bin Laden but dropped the ball. Carter didn't have to support the Afghans and BinLaden against the USSR.
bad foreign policy decisions effect later generations and presidents. that's just the way it is.

In either case, why is it it takes a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 to wake people like you up? You're all outraged, you cry for the government to do something, then when they do, you spend 15 years bitching about what YOU asked for. Why on Earth do ostriches like you stick your head in the sand and pretend the bad guys aren't bad guys because they aren't in your back yard? I'd much rather take them out in THEIR yard before they get any traction.
I never wanted to attack Iraq. Afghanistan made sense at the time Iraq never did to me.
plus they didn't have any traction, the scuds they had were nearly WW2 era tech. they couldn't hit U.S. flyzone planes for 5+ years.
Saddam was not a threat to the US.
"he could not project power against his neighbors"

Bottom line is, you don't know what you're talking about. I was in the First Gulf War. We didn't go more than 25 miles into Iraq. SO whoever you think went around destroying WMDs must have been phantoms.

http://www.newsweek.com/how-us-nerve-gassed-its-own-troops-then-covered-it-317250
During and immediately after the first Gulf War, more than 200,000 of 700,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq and Kuwait in January 1991 were exposed to nerve gas and other chemical agents. Though aware of this, the Department of Defense and CIA launched a campaign of lies and concocted a cover-up that continues today.
A quarter of a century later, the troops nearest the explosions are dying of brain cancer at two to three times the rate of those who were farther away. Others have lung cancer or debilitating chronic diseases, and pain.
More complications lie ahead.According to Dr. Linda Chao, a neurologist at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, “Because part of their brains, the hippocampus, has shrunk, they’re at greater risk for Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases.”At first, the DOD was adamant: No troops were exposed. “No information…indicates that chemical or biological weapons were used in the Persian Gulf,” wrote Secretary of Defense William Perry and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs John Shalikashvili in a 1994 memo to 20,000 Desert Storm veterans. Strictly speaking, they were right: No weapons were used. The nerve agent sarin was in the fallout from the U.S. bombing or detonating of Iraq’s weapons sites...

...Elledge was on a team setting C-4 plastic explosives at Khamisiyah, one of Iraq’s largest weapons sites. “We used timed fuses, which gave us 10 minutes to get a half mile away,” he said. “But even at that distance, the smoke was terrible. And we were sent back in to make sure we got everything. The officers never told us the old rockets were filled with sarin, so we didn’t wear any protective gear.”
Jim Bunker was a lieutenant with the First Infantry Division who had trained as a demolition expert. He told me that “before the DOD blew up the ammunition, it sent papers to the battalion officers and intelligence people with clear markings to help them identify chemical weapons. Then on March 2 or 3, the DOD sent the ordnance disposal team to verify which chemicals were there. We don’t know what they found, because once the troops started demolishing them and getting sick, the reports disappeared.”...

...Ron Brown, a soldier with the 82nd Division, watched the demolitions from a mile away. “Within 15 minutes, I couldn’t breathe and my head was about to split open,” Brown said. “Soldiers were nauseous, dizzy and had diarrhea and muscle spasms. About 30 of us went to the medic, who gave us Motrin and told us to drink water.”
Later that month, Bunker almost died. As the demolitions continued, his symptoms became more severe. “First, I couldn’t control my muscles,” he said. “But in a couple days, I had convulsions and collapsed. After this, they medevacked me to hospitals in Saudi Arabia and Germany, and then to the U.S.”...

Also I can't put my finger on his testimony about the details but there was also a Major Doug Rokke that also did some chem weapons inspections and clean up but mainly DU clean up if i remember correctly..

Bush, Blair and Cheney did not admit the WMDs weren't there. They admitted they didn't find them. Completely different scenarios.
"I apologise," said Tony Blair in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, "for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong because, even though (Saddam) had used chemical weapons extensively against his own people, against others, the program in the form that we thought it was did not exist in the way that we thought."

Gunny

02-24-2016, 01:41 PM

I started the thread after Trump was questioned/rebuked on his comment that Bush lied about the war etc.
and BTW Isis in Iraq is made up of Saddams former Bathist troops that Bush fired all at once leaving them without jobs and nothing to do but be pissed at america.
Clinton could have kiled Bin Laden but dropped the ball. Carter didn't have to support the Afghans and BinLaden against the USSR.
bad foreign policy decisions effect later generations and presidents. that's just the way it is.

I never wanted to attack Iraq. Afghanistan made sense at the time Iraq never did to me.
plus they didn't have any traction, the scuds they had were nearly WW2 era tech. they couldn't hit U.S. flyzone planes for 5+ years.
Saddam was not a threat to the US.
"he could not project power against his neighbors"

Also I can't put my finger on his testimony about the details but there was also a Major Doug Rokke that also did some chem weapons inspections and clean up but mainly DU clean up if i remember correctly..

"I apologise," said Tony Blair in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, "for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong because, even though (Saddam) had used chemical weapons extensively against his own people, against others, the program in the form that we thought it was did not exist in the way that we thought."

Did you miss the part where you are just another egghead with a bunch of pointless links that doesn't know what he's talking about? The fact is ad nauseum, the WMDs existed and we sold the damned things to Saddam and taught him how to use them. You've got NOTHING on that. Period.

Furthermore, you're whining about something that is OBE. No one cares. Yet you live in your own little let's relive the past fantasy world. So let's. The Confederate States had EVERY right to secede and ZERO law precluded it. Does that change the here and now? On;y insofar as the erosion of the Constitution is concerned.

Bush invaded Iraq and he had a valid reason for doing so and that ends your story before you get started. Why don't you try living in the here and now instead of 15 years ago?