So, no WMD after allFollow

certainly not the CIA thats for sure

/sarcasm

*fixed

Edited, Wed Jan 12 14:32:24 2005 by Cncargo

Well, almost everyone. He was listening to British Intelligence and their 15 minute claim. :)

Oh, and...

Impeach Bush!

Was that the 15 minute claim added by Downing Street to make the invasion more palletable to the British Public?

The CIA told them that there were no WMD, the office of the Vice President told them to go back and find WMD.

Yellow Cake
I think the most obvious point of the Bush administration ignoring the evidence in order to push for the war was in the case where they claimed that Iraq was trying to pick up yellow cake uranium. Cheneys office sent a former US ambassador to scope out the claims and he came back saying that they were not only false but so poorly doctored as to be scoffed at.

A couple months after his report the administration were still claiming the yellow cake uranium "evidence" as part of there case. The former ambassador made his findings public and not soon after someone in the Bush administration leaked evidence to the media that the former ambassadors wife was actually an undercover CIA agent. This pretty much ruined her career and jeopardized all the people whom she was working with.

Anthrax
The missing thousands of gallons of anthrax that they were claiming was manufactured in the early 90's and the shelf life for that type of antrhax is 2 and a half years.

Curveball
Okay so they offer this guy a million bucks, US citizenship, and protection for info on WMD. He starts telling horror stories about WMD and WMD trailers attached to trains and semi's. He also goes on to talk about how Saddam has started everything back up again.

None of this evidence is corroborated or fact checked and while they are touting curveball they are still using Saddams exiled son in law as a source to about WMD numbers and such all while ignoring that the son in law who was the former head of the WMD program had claimed that in 1996ish the WMD had been destroyed. Which turns out to be the case.

al-Qaeda
The Bush put out reports of supposed meetings between Iraqi officials and al-qaeda flaming the fans that Iraqi WMD's could be supplied to terrorists for an attack on the United States.

However CIA intelligence of the last meetings between low level officials of Iraq and al-Qaeda showed that the meeting went extremely poorly with Saddam ignoring al-Qaeda and bin Laden calling Saddam the "Socialist Devil".

Not only that but Ansar al-Islam was a terrorist organization with clear links to al-qaeda that operated in the northern section of Iraq where Saddam held no power. Ahah!! a link you say? No dice. turns out this al-qaeda subsidiary was actually fighting there damndest to get Saddam out of power.

The End
As soon as 9/11 happened Bush asked "was this Saddam" and when the answer was no he asked "how can we use this to get into iraq". The administration pushed the intelligence community to tell them what they wanted to hear and then went out of there way to ignore any evidence that showed that there were no WMD in Iraq. They ignored the UN, Hans Blix, the rest of the worlds intelligence community and now they are stuck in Iraq with 120 billion spent, no end in sight, a huge rise in islamic insurgency, 1400 dead americans and huge blow to Americas credibility.

But hey, everyone makes mistakes so heres to hoping he will get the next 4 years right!

I just have one thing to say to all of the people who told me that Saddam had nukes trained on us a few years back...

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA!

Now that all that is said and done we can get to impeaching the guys responsible for this fiasco.

I really don't know what all the fuss is about. After all, the real reason we went there was to free the Iraqi people of their oppression. Remember?

"Slightest attempt"; well, presenting his dossier of WMD to the UN, allowing UN inspectors unfettered access, and more-or-less complying with the no-fly zones is certainly a "slightest attempt". The UN inspectors desired more time, having not found any WMD. They asked the US for intelligence on where to find the WMD (the US KNEW it had them), and described that intelligence as "garbage".

The US didn't want any more inspecting, they wanted some inconsistencies in Saddam's dossier as proof of violation of the latest UN resolution. During the write-up of 1441 they indicated they would not take action without another resolution. Just prior to the war they promised they'd put a resolution for force-of-arms to the Security Council--they did not.



Yeah...beacause Bush and Blair actually invaded Iraq. Did you miss that distinction between them and the others? There's also a large distinction in your claim between "had" and "was capable". There's no doubt Saddam had WMD prior to and just after the first Gulf War. The UN subsequently destroyed a lot of it, apparently between that and natural degredation there was none left. As usual the right confuses pre-1991 stockpiles with current stockpiles, ignores UN action inbetween, and comes to a faulty 1 (Iraq used to have WMD) + 1 (it's 12 years later) = 2 (Iraq must have WMD).

Colin Powell's presentation to the UN was a joke, a bunch of half-assed vague photographs, anecdotes by paid informants, and other Chalabiesque distortions and guesses. It was the vehemence with which the US insisted Iraq had WMD which set us apart from these other countries, which may have merely suspected they did. Saddam did indeed allow unfettered access to inspectors--the latest resolution was working. In the end our insistence has been proven folly, and we have only our headstrong, warmongering government to blame. And those who supported that government.



Ah, where were you in 1988? Were you picketing the streets demanding we invade Iraq? How about even 1998? Were you up in arms over the horrible genocidal madman that was Saddam's Iraq? How about Pol Pot, were you demanding an end to his genocide? Idi Amin? Even two years ago you could've been demanding his turn-over from Saudi Arabia to an internation court to be tried for genocide. Did you do that? Are you even following the case of Auguste Pinochet?

Funny how you're only actionably outraged over the country/maniac your President tells you we should be outraged over. I'd really love to see some consistency out of the right-wingers. Either respond to every dictator/genocidal maniac, or none. Don't use other humans as excuses to invade for other reasons.

Actually, I'm more inclined to believe that it was because Haliburton wanted some of the world's third richest nation's oil.

Hm? You must be referring to pre-1441 access. After resolution 1441 Hans Blix was quite pleased with the unfettered access, including access to palaces. Please correct me with a citation if I'm wrong.



Not a single scientist wanted to be interviewed outside Iraq. It wasn't a matter of Iraqi denial (after a point), but scientists' refusal to be interviewed outside the presence of Iraqi forces. Blame an institutional duress, but not a policy of restriction.



I'll also point out that during the 90s France objected to the increasing offensive nature of the fly-overs, and withdraw from the France-UK-US patrolling coalition. The treatment of the no-fly zones changed from defense to offense. Particularly just before the onset of war when the US itself broke UN resolutions pertaining to Iraq--one, for actively running offensive sorties in the no-fly zones including destruction of Iraqi materials. And two, for inserting CIA and special forces into Northern Iraq, a direct violation of UN resolutions.



Of course, I never said Saddam fully complied with UN resolutions. The US far and away complied more. But your claim that Iraq hadn't even "slightly" conformed to UN Resolutions (specifically 1441) is just plain wrong. They did comply, the inspectors were satisfied with their compliance (more or less), and wanted inspections to continue.



Well, I'm not a big UN fan either, but we're discussing the US primarily.



If I were "the left" you might be correct. I do my damnedest to evaluate each situation under an objective umbrella. This includes all global response, from sanctions to regional action, to finally, invasion of the conflicted state by either a coaltion of the US. In most cases outside of clearly abnormal genocide, or attempts at world-domination, I prefer a regional approach.



Nah, I'm outraged when we aren't consistent in our actions. When just because we invade Iraq we suddenly care the utmost about 25 million foreigners, but when we don't invade Sh[b][/b]itty Country X we don't give a damn about those foreigners.

And this is all very silly anyway, as neither the Afghanistan nor Iraq war was predicated on protection of innocents, or democracy. Do you think we would've invaded them if there'd never been a 9/11? Or in Iraq's case, had never been a Gulf War I or UN Resolutions? Of course not. We used the convenient "humanitarian" reasons for invasion only superficially, and only after the fact. For Afghanistan it was a nice side bonus to our rightful claim of vengeance for 9/11. For Iraq it was at most a tertiary "reason" behind 1. WMDs and 2. UN Resolution compliance. Only until those panned out were we really there to free people and bring democracy to the world.

Would I like us to intervene in every downtrodden country? Heck no, they should go to the UN. That's corrupt, so failing that go to any regional authority (NATO, the African Union, Arab League, etc.) Failing that, only a truly global initiative to act would be acceptable for my country to involve itself. I'm very much against unilateral involvement.

Well, we are now the raging bull instead of the reluctant giant. How does it feel to be the villain? Thank you Bush!

Adiemus writes:
Almost the entire world agrees that Hussein either had or was capable of manufacturing or importing WMDs- US intel, British intel, Czech intel, Israeli intel, Russian intel, the Americans, the British, the French, the Germans, the Russians, Kofi Annan and the UN, Bill Clinton and his gang of thieves as well as Bush and Blair, yet almost all of you hold only Bush and Blair responsible for the possible mistake.

C'mon Leftists...at least make my job of pointing out your hyprocracy a bit more difficult.

Hmm...Feb 2001, Colin Powell says:
We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they 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...
and in May 2001 he says:
Secretary Powell: The sanctions, as they are called, have succeeded over the last 10 years, not in deterring him from moving in that direction, but from actually being able to move in that direction. The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn't have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been contained. And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological and nuclear -- I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful. There's no question that they have some stockpiles of some of these sorts of weapons still under their control, but they have not been able to break out, they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago.

So containment, using this arms control sanctions regime, I think has been reasonably successful. We have not been able to get the inspectors back in, though, to verify that, and we have not been able to get the inspectors in to pull up anything that might be left there. So we have to continue to view this regime with the greatest suspicion, attribute to them the most negative motives, which is quite well-deserved with this particular regime, and roll the sanctions over, and roll them over in a way where the arms control sanctions really go after their intended targets -- weapons of mass destruction -- and not go after civilian goods or civilian commodities that we really shouldn't be going after, just let that go to the Iraqi people. That wasn't the purpose of the oil-for-food program. And by reconfiguring them in that way, I think we can gain support for this regime once again.
When we came into office on the 20th of January, the whole sanctions regime was collapsing in front of our eyes. Nations were bailing out on it. We lost the consensus for this kind of regime because the Iraqi regime had successfully painted us as the ones causing the suffering of the Iraqi people, when it was the regime that was causing the suffering. They had more than enough money; they just weren't spending it in the proper way. And we were getting the blame for it. So reconfiguring the sanctions, I think, helps us and continues to contain the Iraqi regime.
And on July 29th, 2001, Rice said:
But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.

A few months later and Bush and Co are stating exactly how many tons of this and that are in the area around Tikrit, and Rice is saying how we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud over and American city.
How's that for hypocrisy?
Sorry for all the cut and paste, btw.

Thats one long *** Police car Tricky.