Iraq war, Saddam, Bush Admin ...again

[Kathianne]

we disagree

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

[revelarts]

for the record

The Bush administration commissioned the 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]

“

"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."

”

The review was conducted by Charles A. Duelfer and the Iraq Survey Group. In October 2004, Bush said of Duelfer’s analysis:^[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 (link provided by FJ)


http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...l-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]

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

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
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


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/2005/6/2...sts_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]

New Yorker Magazine Article by Symour Hersh

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.” [Bamford, 2004; Falls Church News-Press, 2/2004]


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]

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




curveball
the best source for WMD info was a known fraud
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...808,full.story60 minutes
CIA Europe Head

Bush CIA Breifer

[Gunny]

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.

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.

[revelarts]

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]

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]

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.

Question becomes why did Bush admit there weren't any?
I don't think he lied, but I don't remember HIM pushing the Syria story.

[Black Diamond]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[revelarts]

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]

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

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