[DonQatU]

You folks know the rest of the story!

Nuff said! :fire:

Don

[Mike Irwin]

:confused:

[Mark Tyson]

Care to elaborate? I don't know what you're referring to.

[DonQatU]

you'll find! .........

On June 16, Bush branded as "revisionist historians" those who now criticize his decision to use military force to oust Saddam Hussein from power. "This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now there are some who would like to rewrite history; revisionist historians is what I like to call them," the president said in a speech in New Jersey.

Don

[bfason]

History is always being revised as more evidence is gathered, and more previously confidential documents are declassified.

To marshall support for the war, President Bush claimed that Iraq had tried to purchase weapons-grade uranium from Niger. Eventually the documents which supposedly proved this claim were released to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The research branch of the IAEA examined the documents and within one day determined that they were forgeries. They were such bad forgeries that anyone capable of rubbing two braincells together could have uncovered the fraud using Google.

Today, no one seriously claims that the documents were legitimate, or that Iraq ever tried to buy weapons-grade uranium from Niger.

The president lied in order to lead the country into a war, and finally his lies are catching up with him. We're expected to be in Iraq for at least five more years, so get ready for a daily US soldier body count and still more lies.

A few years ago I remember many people getting upset that a president lied about getting a few hummers from a young woman who flashed her thong underwear at him and brought him a pizza. Funny how so many of the people who got upset then can muster only a yawn now, and vice versa.

[faustulus]

The president lied in order to lead the country into a war,
See: USS Maine
See: Gulf of Tonkin
See: Mexican American war
See: the Lusitania

[Khornet]

But it has not been shown in any convincing way that the president lied. I know you have already decided he lied, based on the sole reason of the many he gave which (so far) has not been vindicated. But I also believe, based on what you've all been saying since before the war, that you had already concluded he was a liar before there was any evidence either way.

If we applied the 'Bush lies' rules of evidence to the 'Bush lies' crowd, they too are liars, since a number of their claims (tens of thousands of casualties, slaughter of civilians, eco-disaster, etc) have been shown wrong.

It would be nice to wait for good data, or at least better data. Some serious investigations are under way now. And the only one so far, the 'Blair lied: BBC' case, has found that BBC lied. 'Course, they, like our own 'Bush lies' folks, had already decided Blair was a liar. THEN they set out to gather data. Not good technique.

[DonQatU]

And the only one so far, the 'Blair lied: BBC' case, has found that BBC lied.

So what did the BBC lie about K-Hornet? You mean when they reported that Tony Blair claimed that Saddam "could launch an attack using WMDs in 45 minutes"? You mean Blair really didn't say that?

Did BBC also lie when they said that Blair's dossier was based on 12 year old information they plagiarized from an American/Iranian graduate student's paper?

What exactly was BBC's "big lie"?

Don

[bfason]

But I also believe, based on what you've all been saying since before the war, that you had already concluded he was a liar before there was any evidence either way.

If you are including me in that category, then you clearly did not read my posts. My opinion of GWB's character is in any event irrelevant to the specific claim that President Bush made as part of his case against Iraq in his State of the Union speech last Jan. 28. His exact words: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

I did not conclude that Bush lied about Nigerian uranium until I read an article by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker (26 March 2003). A copy of his article is here. (http://lists.democracygroups.org/pipermail/rightwatch/2003q1/000190.html)

It took the IAEA "only a few hours to determine that the documents were fake. The agency had been given about a half-dozen letters and other communications between officials in Niger and Iraq, many of them written on letterheads of the Niger government. The problems were glaring. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, who had been out of office since 1989. Another letter, allegedly from Tandja Mamadou, the President of Niger, had a signature that had obviously been
faked and a text with inaccuracies so egregious, the senior I.A.E.A. official said, that they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet."

White House backs off claim uranium buy (http://www.msnbc.com/news/935946.asp?0cv=CA01&cp1=1)

What else do you need?

If they lied about the claim of Nigerian uranium to Iraq, then what else did they lie about in order to persuade the country to go to war against Iraq? The truth is that the foreign policy players in the adminsitration around Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rummy, et al., had decided back in the mid-90s that they wanted to go to war against Baghdad. It just took 9-11 to mobilize the country behind them.

[gburner]

I stand by my previous posts on this subject...DonQ is becoming quite the troll with his 'liar, liar, pants on fire' routine. Why not give it a rest
before you give the enemy any more aid
and comfort??!!:uhoh:

[bfason]

We were evaluating the truthfulness of the president's statements regarding weapons of mass destruction. Are you saying that attempting to determine the truth gives aid and comfort to the enemy?


Search for truth = treason?

[agricola]

khornet,

Actually the Commons committee investigating found that HMG had "accidentally" mislead people by including the 45-minute claim when it was based on the thinnest of evidence (one unsubstantiated claim) - but noone was really to blame for that (Alistair Campbell was found not to be responsible on a tied vote where the chairman had to cast).

"We conclude that the 45 minutes claim did not warrant the prominence given to it in the dossier, because it was based on intelligence from a single, uncorroborated source. We recommend that the government explain why the claim was given such prominence," the report states.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/story/0,12123,993744,00.html

The BBC claim - that the 45 minutes claim was inserted to "sex up" the dossier - has been backed up in part by the MoD (who admitted one of their men met with the reporter Gilligan) and the Intelligence Services (who have by all accounts been briefing against the Government), who apparently are in uproar because the whole episode comes down to either them being incompetent fools, or HMG misleading the people.

According to the MoD, Dr Kelly admitted to having met Gilligan. Asked why the 45-minute claim was put in, Dr Kelly said "probably for impact".

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/story/0,12123,995047,00.html


Don,

Thats the second, "dodgy", dossier, you traitorous vermin (copyright gburner)

[gburner]

If the noose fits....

Searching for the truth is all well and good. That's not what's going on here.
This is a case of using any pretext to weaken the effectiveness of this president as he leads the country in it's fight against those who would see us all dead.

In the interest of full disclosure, the
President chose to cite reports of purchases of uraniun by Iraq from Niger.
These reports ultimately proved bogus and the administration has admitted so.
It was not the single issue that propelled us to war, but part of a highly detailed indictment of the Hussein regime which cited chapter and verse multiple violations of international law as well as volations of the cease fire which paused the hostilities during the first gulf war.
There are voices in this country that do not have this country's best interests at heart, that desperately disagree with our strong international aims and will stop at nothing to see that we fail in this endeavor. The owner's of those voices sow the seeds of treason by attempting to tear us apart from within. To call this a search for truth is an attempt to put chrome plating on manure.

[Hkmp5sd]

Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

[Khornet]

that I stand by my characterization of the attitude of the 'Bush lies' crowd. I've seen nothing to dissuade me so far. All are of course entitled to their opinions, but the 'Bush lies' chant reeks of animus rather than reasoned opposition. Now to specifics:

Agricola Don, bfason, thanks. But is the glass half-full or half empty? What we appear to know now is that Bush and Blair gave credit to reports which have since proved wrong. To me that proves.....that they gave credit to reports which have subsequently proved wrong. To you, and the BBC, it proves that they lied.

Now, it's possible (though not likely in my opinion) that they were lying. But none of you knows that, nor do I. I start from the impression that Bush is honest, but, knowing that governments do lie, I reserve judgement. And knowing that news media do lie, I reserve judgement.

Let's turn this around. Didn't we all recently have a dustup about Paul Wolfowitz declaring that the Iraq war was all about oil? The 'Bush lies' crowd jumped on that uncritically, and ended with egg on their faces when it was shown to be a, shall we say, loose interpretation of Wolfowitz' remarks. Did the member who posted that Wolfowitz story lie? Is he a LIAR? No, he saw something that fit with a pattern he thinks exists, and forgot his critical faculties for a moment. And was gracious enough to acknowledge the error of the story.

GWB and Blair may well have swallowed a story which fit with a pattern they though they were seeing, in fact a pattern which was known to exist already given Saddam's history, a pattern with far more history to support it than the 'Bush lies' conceit. And, if I'm not mistaken, they graciously acknowledged it.

We of The High Road would do well to study their example.

[agricola]

khornet,

GWB and Blair may well have swallowed a story which fit with a pattern they though they were seeing, in fact a pattern which was known to exist already given Saddam's history, a pattern with far more history to support it than the 'Bush lies' conceit. And, if I'm not mistaken, they graciously acknowledged it.

we already know that Saddam was a tyrant, that he abused his people and that he had possessed and used chemical weapons both against Iran and against his own people.

However, the questions that people are asking now are:

i) was the case for war made using "facts" which have turned out to be false, or at the least inaccurate?

The answer clearly is yes. For a start, we have the Niger Yellowcake faked documents. We then have the 45 minute claim. We also have the discredited Atta meeting in Prague with members of Iraqi intelligence (to say nothing of the Saddam- al-Qaeda links)- repeated even after it has been disproved (even this week). Subsequent events have shown that Iraq was not awash with WMD and the language, in the UK at least, this week changed from WMD to WMD programme, which is an important distinction.

You've accepted the Niger yellowcake story as an honest mistake - fair enough. However I would suggest that the US President would be expected to have a more efficient intelligence service than the IAEA and so it strikes me as strange that the IAEA would be able to disprove (presumably quite sensitive) intelligence while the CIA wouldnt.

From the UK perspective at the very least IMHO the facts were "spun" in order to present the evidence in the best possible light. The yellowcake story was faked, probably by Iraqi opposition elements, as was the 45 minute claim. The fact that, compared to 1991, the Iraqi armed forces were somewhere like 30% of their effectiveness and that the defences of Israel, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were far stronger than 1991 seems to have been forgotten.

Didnt the CIA assess that the only real chance that Saddam would use WMD is if he thought his back was to the wall?


ii) was war necessary at that time to achieve those aims?

it comes down to whether or not the breaches of international law were sufficient to justify invasion, "regime change" and the occupation. Legally, I would say that they werent. Blix and Baradei were back in, and given the searches underway now the timescale allowed to them seems pathetically small. The expulsion of the UNSCOM inspectors did present a breach, as did the existance of the al-Samound missile. Is that enough to justify the war? Or the occupation?

I'd argue that when a leader like Bush or Blair is entrusted with the lives of the men under their command the evidence would have to be as overwhelming as possible; the evidence as shown in both dossiers, the SOTU address and Colin Powell's briefing cannot be said to be "overwhelming", but tenuous at best.

I must also declare that this was the first campaign that a loved one has been involved in. Having seen what the strain did, not only to his mother and family, but also his fiance and to myself, one cannot simply glibly accept the explanation of HMG and the shameful aspect in which it has attempted to shift blame to the BBC.

[gburner]

Blix and Baradei were not sent to Iraq this past year to continue the search for WMD...the UN gave a mandate that those teams were to have unfettered access to ALL programs, personnel and materials and that the Baathists were to actively cooperate with the accumulation of materials and information. They were to be collection and documentation agents, not detectives. The onus was on the Iraqis to come clean, not for the inspectors to play a never ending game of 'whose got the button'. Six months of obfuscation, opposition, threats, deception and behind he scenes machinations was enough to convince this administration that the Baathists were not cooperating. If they wanted to avoid war, they could have come clean within a week. Instead, they had 6 months to hide, transfer and/or sell all
proscribed items. And we're the bad guys????????:rolleyes:

[DonQatU]

Didn't we all recently have a dustup about Paul Wolfowitz declaring that the Iraq war was all about oil?

Khornet, I don't think the stink was created because Wolfowitz declared the Iraq war was about oil.

The stink was caused when Wolfowitz said the administration used WMDs argument as their MAIN reason for war ......"because that was a reason "we" (those surrounding Bush) could all agree on."

Don

[DonQatU]

The US has the Iraqi intelligence officer that supposedly met with Atta before 9/11 in custody.

Richard Pearle wants him questioned by interrogators that share his point of view.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30323-2003Jul9.html

Don

PS - agricola, I'm not a traitorous vermin! I AM NOT traitorous! ;-)

[Khornet]

Thanks. The point--the only point of the thread-- is "Bush lied". The answer--the only answer-- is "Not so fast." I think you acknowledge that.

You are indeed correct that we should expect a higher standard of intelligence from a President and PM than we do from, e.g., the BBC or the Guardian.

But of course, for the 'Bush lies' crowd, BBC and Guardian seem to suffice. Not for me, thanks.

That war causes stress, and the stress is worse when one of your own is involved, is true but nothing to the point about whether Bush lied.

Don, the story is as follows: Wolfowitz was misquoted in a German paper as saying that we went to war with Iraq FOR OIL. A British paper picked it up and ran with it. Guardian, I think. Headlines: Wolfowitz: "War Was For Oil' etc. Turns out, Wolfowitz was being asked why we didn't try economic sanctions against Saddam, like we would for N. Korea. His answer: they wouldn't work against Iraq, because Iraq "swims on a sea of oil", that is, she has economic resources which make her relatively indifferent to sanctions. So military option was chosen.

You are thinking of a different 'Bush lies' club gaffe: The alleged We-Told-Them-It-Was-All-About-WMD-But-It -Really-Wasn't story. What Wolfowitz actually said was, we really had a bunch of good reasons, but each of the parties involved in the decision had some of them he couldn't support; meanwhile WMD (which was one of the reasons all along) was the one ALL could support, so we went with it. Seems perfectly reasonable, unless you think politicians don't do politics.

[Khornet]

I'll believe the US has said intelligence officer, and that he met with Mr. Atta, when I get good data and the story hold up. Wonderful, if true. IF true.

As for Perle wanting the guy interrogated "by inerrogators that share his poiny of view"...what the heck does that mean? Should we have Arafat do it? That's the kind of remark I'm referring to in my post above. It makes it look as if you are waiting to seize on the slightest crumb which will cast the Bushies in a bad light. It bespeaks a bad faith approach, and thereby diminishes one's credibility. We can do better than that.

[Khornet]

Also, Agricola, while one should expect Gov't to insist on the best data possible before making a decision, it's unrealistic to demand that it be perfect, and no particle of it be found wrong after the fact. Sometimes you just have to decide. It sure seems to me that Bush spent more time on figuring out what had to be done, and on getting the nation to go along (called 'leadership') than he spent on buffing his position so no one could criticize him afterward.

Screwups? Overheated responses to shadows? Entirely possible, though not desirable. But outright lies? Sorry, hard for me to swallow. Screwups are bad enough. But apparently not 'criminal' enough for the 'Bush lies' camp.

[DRC]

When you start losing a debate on issues such as this you simply go start another thread with a slightly different angle to the same subject matter? :rolleyes:

Everything you've posted in your other threads or in threads you've participated in on these subjects have been discredited in some form or another with documentation and links. I think the saying says ""Third time's a charm." So one would figure that after three if you fail give it up.

I'll help you out a little here if I may:

(I'm being Don here) Bush lied! The Bush administration lied! Everybody lies and has lied to me! Unless they are on line with the my beliefs they lied! Everything about this war was a lie! Lying liars, all of them!

Am I at least on the right track with this because it has been your mantra throughout all of your other posts?

For any that may be reading that are not familiar with DonQatU look for any thread started by him, look for any thread talking favorably about Bush or his administration or anything favorable to the war and there you will find Don. My impersonation of him pretty much sums up what you will find Don writing about in every case. No it's not a form letter, it's just Don doing what he does best, repeating himself without fact.

Now since I've become fairly familiar with Don I know that he is thinking similarly about myself and I envite anyone to read any of the threads and draw their own conclusions, but the difference between you and I Don is that I read all the information good and bad, see who's writing it and why, and determine whether or not it's someone's opinion or a basis in fact.

KHornet said it best and I've spoken similar revelations as well (but then I get sucked into Don's world and...well, it goes downhill from there ;)

"It would be nice to wait for good data, or at least better data. Some serious investigations are under way now. And the only one so far, the 'Blair lied: BBC' case, has found that BBC lied. 'Course, they, like our own 'Bush lies' folks, had already decided Blair was a liar. THEN they set out to gather data. Not good technique."

Oh well, Don never stop being you. It's what we like about you :D

Take care folks, it's all yours. I'm going to see if there are some real threads to read and respond to. ;)

DRC

[Tommy Gunn]

Bush & Blair had their own reasons for going into Iraq, and the war against terror was not it. Oil? I don't think its that simple.

I wish that George Bush had asked Congress to declare war on Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Reagon should have declared war again Syria and Iran and their terrorist proxies after the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut.

Unfortunately, we don't fight when we need to and we get into fights for the wrong reasons when we do fight.

[bfason]

Searching for the truth is all well and good. That's not what's going on here.

Did you even read the article by Hersh?

This is a case of using any pretext to weaken the effectiveness of this president as he leads the country in it's fight against those who would see us all dead.

Can you name a specific person who is "using any pretext to weaken the effectiveness of this president"? Seymour Hersh? Bfason? Anyone here at The High Road? Who specifically are you accusing?

But it has not been shown in any convincing way that the president lied.

Admit that you did not even read the Hersh article. Now the Bush Administration admits that it's claim regarding Nigerian uranium was false. It was so patently false that the IAEA disproved it in a single afternoon. And you mean to tell me that all the President's men with all of the intelligence resources at their disposal were duped by this bad forgery? That Wolfowitz, Cheney and Rumsfeld are that incompetent? Come on....

The owner's of those voices sow the seeds of treason by attempting to tear us apart from within. To call this a search for truth is an attempt to put chrome plating on manure.

Was Hersh's exposition of the Bush Administration's uranium fraud an act of treason?

What we appear to know now is that Bush and Blair gave credit to reports which have since proved wrong. To me that proves.....that they gave credit to reports which have subsequently proved wrong. To you, and the BBC, it proves that they lied.

"The British panel said it was unclear why the British government asserted as a 'bald claim' that there was intelligence that Iraq had sought to buy significant amounts of uranium in Africa. It noted that the CIA had already debunked this intelligence, and questioned why an official British government intelligence dossier published four months before Bush’s speech included the claim as part of an effort to make the case for going to war against Iraq."

http://www.msnbc.com/news/935946.asp?0cv=CA01&cp1=1

You see that? The CIA knew is was bull????, but Bush Administration hawks made sure to include it in Bush's speech *despite* it's being obvious bunk.

Let's turn this around. Didn't we all recently have a dustup about Paul Wolfowitz declaring that the Iraq war was all about oil? The 'Bush lies' crowd jumped on that uncritically...

I sure didn't. Someone emailed me a link to that story, and it just didn't sound like something Wolfowitz would say.

>I start from the impression that Bush is honest,

OK, there's the problem, folks. It's called naiveté, and it's curable. Get thee to a library.

[DonQatU]

Nice try, DRC! Yes, I invite all to read the posts I've started!

Nuff said on your claims.

Khornet, Perle doesn't want the truth. He would rather the Office of Special Plans undertake the interrogation rather than the CIA. That way he can establish that Atta met with Iraqi intelligence......... whether it happened or not!

Don

[DonQatU]

Don, the story is as follows: Wolfowitz was misquoted in a German paper as saying that we went to war with Iraq FOR OIL.

Khornet, you don't remember what German newspaper "misquoted" Wolfowitz?

It sure wasn't a "misquote"! I sink zat "newzpaper" vas the "Vanity Fair"! Zats where I got zee article! :D

Don

[JDSlack]

HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.


...According to Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary"

[agricola]

khornet,

but this statement ignores the history of UN sanctions against the regime:

Turns out, Wolfowitz was being asked why we didn't try economic sanctions against Saddam, like we would for N. Korea. His answer: they wouldn't work against Iraq, because Iraq "swims on a sea of oil", that is, she has economic resources which make her relatively indifferent to sanctions. So military option was chosen.

An oil embargo is actually one of the easier embargoes to carry out - its not a matter (when one is taling about a trade on a national scale like Iraq) of them hiding oil under machine parts or in false bottoms on trucks. In fact I'd say economically embargoing a regime like Saddams, which is based around the oil business, would be easier than embargoing a nation that isnt as dependent on one resource like North Korea.

Personally, I dont know enough about the US to say one way or the other about Bush and the way the war was pushed over there. From the UK perspective, frankly the whole thing stinks and the actions of HMG have made people so suspicious of TB and his ilk that the Torys under the positively Fabian (and it seems more than a little prescient) Iain Duncan Smith are now in the lead, poll-wise and will probably win the next general election on the issue of Governmental mistrust alone.

[CZ-75]

Care to elaborate? I don't know what you're referring to.

Forgot the tinfoil, eh? It helps you tune in alpha waves from Alpha Centuri - the ones with the voices telling you about the conspiracies and black helos. Also keeps TIA and Ashkroft from reading your thoughts. ;)

[bfason]

An oil embargo is actually one of the easier embargoes to carry out -

Iraq was smuggling oil through Turkery and Syria. By 2002, the sanction regime was falling apart and generally losing effectiveness while providing Saddam with a ready-made rationale for Iraq's economic failures. The sanctions were a source of mounting anger thoughout the Arab world. For a discussion of why continuing sanctions - even "smart sanctions" - was ultimately untenable, see _The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq_ by former CIA officer Kenneth M. Pollack.

We really did not have any good options. Continuing the sanctions and no-fly zones was a bad policy. War is always a bad policy. Walking away and washing our hands of it all would have been a bad policy as it would undoubtedly have given Saddam a free hand to slaughter Kurds and Shia, and resume his quest for WMD and regional hegemony. Any way you sliced it, innocent people would die, and the US would be blamed by somebody or another.

Regardless of whether or not the war was the least-bad option, it is undeniable that the Bush Administration lied in order to garner support for the war. By "lie," I mean that they made false statements with knowledge of their falsity, or with reckless disregard for the truth thereof. (It amounts to the same thing.) They intended that we rely on these false statements.

It was not a case of "oops, I did it again," another error. These were deliberate calculated lies.

[Khornet]

Don, the thread was here at THR. Wolfowitz' remarks, in English, were translated into German by the German paper (Der Spiegel? Can't remember) and that was picked up by the Guardian and translated back into English...always a good way to scramble meanings. Then the Guardian story was posted here to show how the war was alway about us seizing their oil. I'm sure others here can recall.

Agricola, we both know that Iraq was selling oil via the UN "Oil for Food" program, bringing in plenty for Saddam to use. And we both know how easy it was for the US to get the UN to do their bidding. It makes sense that embargo wouldn't work.

Actually, you did say one wise thing, the wisest in the entire thread:

"Personally, I don't know enough.."

Dead right. None of us do.

bfason, I don't have words to address a non-rational response like that. Let's have a discussion, an exchange of ideas, a comparing of reasoning, not a peeing contest.

[Khornet]

"In 1998 the Clinton administration asserted that Iraq provided technical assistance in the construction of a VX production facility in Sudan, undertaken jointly with al-Qaeda. In retaliation for al-Qaeda's August 1998 truck bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, President Bill Clinton ordered destruction of the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan's capital.

"Clinton's advisers released scant public evidence about al Shifa, and the Tomahawk missile attack was widely regarded as a blunder. Top Clinton administration officials, and career analysts still in government, maintained there was strong evidence behind the strike like that it remains to valuable to disclose.

"On March 16, 2003, the Observer (UK) reported that despite the Clinton administration's assertion that there was VX nerve production at the al Shifa factory,' little evidence substantiated that claim, and subsequent investigations found that the factory made veterinary antibiotics and nothing else.'"

From the Washington Post, Dec. 12, 2002

We all know how that one turned out. Was Clinton lying? or did he feel the need to act quickly and firmly with less-than-perfect intelligence?

The point is not to Clinton-bash. It's to say that this kind of thing happens, in all sorts of administrations, for all sorts of reasons, and lying ain't necessarily the one.

[bfason]

bfason, I don't have words to address a non-rational response like that.

I posed four questions for you. To recap:

1. Did you read the article by Hersh that I referenced?

2. Can you name a specific person who is "using any pretext to weaken the effectiveness of this president"? Seymour Hersh? Bfason? Anyone here at The High Road?

3. Do you believe that the President's men with all of the intelligence resources at their disposal were duped by the bad uranium-from-Niger forgeries?

3. Was Hersh's exposition of the Bush Administration's uranium fraud an act of treason?

They are all yes-or-no questions.

[bfason]

Was Clinton lying? or did he feel the need to act quickly and firmly with less-than-perfect intelligence?

The Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant on the outskirts of Khartoum could not have been folded like a tent and spirited away in a day or so. There was no militarily important need to "act quickly and firmly." Are we to believe that the only time they could hope to hit this plant was on the night of Monica Lewinsky's return to the grand jury?

Regarding the question "was Clinton lying?" the only possible answer would be "well, were his lips moving?"

Yes, I'm telling you that our leaders lie.

(BTW, it's not Santa Claus - it's your parents.)

[DonQatU]

Don, the thread was here at THR. Wolfowitz' remarks, in English, were translated into German by the German paper (Der Spiegel? Can't remember) and that was picked up by the Guardian and translated back into English...always a good way to scramble meanings. Then the Guardian story was posted here to show how the war was alway about us seizing their oil. I'm sure others here can recall.

I read Der Speigel daily. I also read the Guardian quite often. I don't recall reading anything about Wolfowitz claiming the war in Iraq was about "OIL".

I DO remember a few German articles that mentioned Wolfowitz' comments from his Vanity Fair interview.

I also remember the Pentagon thought he was taken out of context. So they posted Wolfowitz' exact quote.

"According to a tape recording made by the Pentagon, the actual quote is, "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason."

Hmmmm! Don

[SkunkApe]

Don,

There you are confusing two different Wolfowitz statements, I think. They are:

1) The Vanity Fair interview:

"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in Vanity Fair magazine's July issue.

2) The discredited Gaurdian article (6/4/03) that took words out of context:

"Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

[DonQatU]

2) The discredited Gaurdian article (6/4/03) that took words out of context:

"Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

I never heard this. I'm so glad that Wolfowitz didn't say we went to war for oil! So we went to war over WMDs?!! :scrutiny:

Don

[bfason]

I read Der Speigel daily.

It's published *weekly*. And it's "Der SpIEgel," not "Der SpEIgel."

Khornet wrote:
If we applied the 'Bush lies' rules of evidence to the 'Bush lies' crowd, they too are liars, since a number of their claims (tens of thousands of casualties, slaughter of civilians, eco-disaster, etc) have been shown wrong.

Those were not CLAIMS - they were PREDICTIONS.

There is a difference between a claim and a prediction. If you make a prediction that does not materialize, that doesn't mean you are a liar. It just means your prediction was wrong.

Khornet, do you see the difference between a prediction and a claim?

Prediction: I predict that they will not find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Claim: Saddam and Bin Laden are smoking a hookah in an Afghan cave with Elivs.

And now the latest from Britain.
Blair Aides Don't Expect to Find Iraqi Weapons, Reports Say (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/international/worldspecial/10CND-WEAP.html)

Pull the string, and it appears that the whole ball starts to unravel.

[DonQatU]

It's published *weekly*. And it's "Der SpIEgel," not "Der SpEIgel."

It's updated daily on line, bfason. But thanks for the spelling help!

http://www.spiegel.de/

And I did a search in Der Spiegel ......... Khornets misquote did not appear in Der Spiegel.

In fact, what he thought he "remembered", wasn't even close to the "misquote" that was in the Guardian.

Don

[gburner]

Bfason,

I did look at the Hirsh article from the New Yorker...left wing writer hacking for a left wing magazine. ZERO chance of a report that even comes close to playing down the middle. Aside from the obvious, the detail that really struck home was Mr. Hirsh citing unnamed sources revealing information allegedly gleaned from a top secret Senate meeting with the chief of CIA. After reading that, the rest was so much yadayadayada.

Conspiracy theorists and the bufoonery that surrounds their attempts to contort reality to fit their twisted perspective are usually the fodder for a good guffaw.

You folks, on the other hand, scare me
with your treasonous whining and feeble attempts to discredit this administration. :barf:

[DonQatU]

Bfason, isn't that the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh who received the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, for his exclusive disclosure of the Vietnam War tragedy at the hamlet of My Lai?

I think he also won some other jounalistic awards. But the Pulitzer is the one that stands out in my mind.

Don

[bfason]

I did look at the Hirsh article

His name is Hersh.

Seymour Myron Hersh was born along with a twin brother April 8, 1937, to a middle-class family in Chicago. His father ran a dry-cleaning plant, and he had older sisters who were also twins. In 1958 he received a B.A. in history from the University of Chicago. Shortly thereafter he entered journalism when a friend told him that the Chicago City News Bureau, a crime and courts clearinghouse for the city's newspapers, would hire college graduates with no experience for $35 a week. He later served in the army and was honorably discharged. He went to work for United Press International wire, and then for Associated Press, which shipped him to Washington. There he proved indefatigable, and AP promoted him to Pentagon correspondent in 1966. He did 7 years at The New York Times, and uncovered the story of the My Lai massacre using his contacts within the military. He uncovered the CIA's illegal surveillance of domestic organizations it deemed subversive -- a blatant violation of the agency's charter to gather foreign intelligence only. He's written intelligently about Henry Kissinger, John F. Kennedy, Barry McCaffery, the Israeli nuclear program, etc. He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist. British press baron Robert Maxwell and his foreign editor at the London Daily Mirror, Nicholas Davies, once sued Hersh for libel, and lost.

And you just dismiss him with a wave. Had you heard of him before?

What do you mean by "leftwing"?

You folks, on the other hand, scare me with your treasonous whining

What do you mean by "treasonous"?

Does a Good American always believe the Fearless Leader? Is it treasonous to demand evidence to support accusations? Does skepticism of our leaders depend on which party sits in the White House? If the case against Saddam was so solid, why did they lie?

[DonQatU]

But it has not been shown in any convincing way that the president lied. - khornet

Evidently CBS feels confident enough to come to that conclusion!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/25/iraq/main560449.shtml

I find this to be the most telling part of the article: "As long as the statement was attributed to British Intelligence, the White House officials argued, it would be factually accurate."

In other words...... they knew it was a lie, but could claim "ignorance" if caught! Very, very, slimey! :mad:

Don

[faustulus]

Actually our nation would be safer if he did lie.
If he didn't then there was a catastrophic breakdown in intelligence or the weapons are still out there only no one is in charge of them. This whole situation is a Catch 22.

[Khornet]

Checked your link to CBS story. I agree it sure doesn't look good for Bush (or us). On the other hand, two things: the text doesn't really bear out the headline's claim that Bush knew the data was false. Second, this is only the umpteenth story in which the damnation of Bush turns on the very careful parsing of one phrase describing one portion of the administration's rationale. As noted above, we once had 'ironclad' proof that the administration frankly admitted we were in Iraq to take their oil.

I'm sorry guys, but enough major media outlets and their hero reporters (Peter Arnett comes to mind) have come a cropper in the last year that I would think a reasonable person would want to wait awhile before accepting anything, whether it supports or undermines his own views. Especially stories which purport to dissect the motivations and inner thoughts of others. That's nothing more than common sense.

As for Mr. Hersh, when did he become without sin? If he was once right about something, does it follow he's always right? Because by that standard, Bush is by definition right, since he was right about some of his claims on Iraq.

As for 'prediction' vs 'claim': a distinction without a difference, my friend. Both were being used as absolute reasons for and against a proposed action. If we wish to play the parsing game, we would have to accept that the opponents of the war were baldly CLAIMING that Saddam had the power to inflict horrible casualties. They were CLAIMING that we could not wage war without slaughtering thousands of innocents. Etc, etc.

bfason- I was referring to your comment about my impression that Bush is honest, the one about "Get thee to a library", as being non-rational. I'm sure you can see my point.

[bfason]

They were all yes-or-no questions. And you still do not want to answer them.


As for Mr. Hersh, when did he become without sin?

No one claimed that is he "without sin," only that he has a track record for integrity and meticulous attention to detail.

Review the evidence surrounding the uranium claim and you are forced to arrive at either one of two conclusions.

A) The Bush foreign policy players (Cheney, Rummie, Wolfowitz) are incredibly incompetent for believing it; or

B) It was a calculated, deliberate lie.

The first conclusion is simply implausible.

I start from the impression that Bush is honest

Well, he is a politican, right?

[Khornet]

c) the story is being manipulated and blown out of proportion, but swallowed whole by those who are so predisposed.

[DontShootMe]

Nobody is going to change anyone's mind one way or the other...

I'll bet the bush admin. could just go ahead and say, "yeah, we lied. We made up the whole thing so we could take this 'bad guy' out. Plus we've got our own stronghold in the middle east now, and control of a major stockpile of oil - but you folks go on ahead and buy another SUV and vote for bush again. Our second term will begin with acquisitions of Iran, Syria, Liberia, etc... The United States would like to welcome Afghanistan as our 51st state... It will now be known as Bushizion."

Most party-line followers would still have their noses up his...

The truth is irrelevant here... This is all about emotion.

[Khornet]

That is, there's a lot more emotion than reason in this debate.

That's why I ask the Bush-lied crowd to exercise the same skepticism they apply to stories reflecting well on Bush to the ones which condemn him.

How many times do I have to say this before someone even addresses it? We just don't know, and if half what the anti-Bush folks say is right, and half of what the other side says is right, then....we just don't know yet.

Khornet signing off