Who Is Lying About Iraq? WSJ OpEd (long)

[Martrae]

A campaign of distortion aims to discredit the liberation.

BY NORMAN PODHORETZ
Monday, November 14, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.

The main "lie" that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD as they have invariably come to be called. From this followed the subsidiary "lie" that Iraq under Saddam's regime posed a two-edged mortal threat. On the one hand, we were informed, there was a distinct (or even "imminent") possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us or our allies; and on the other hand, there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked.

This entire scenario of purported deceit was given a new lease on life by the indictment in late October of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby stands accused of making false statements to the FBI and of committing perjury in testifying before a grand jury that had been convened to find out who in the Bush administration had "outed" Valerie Plame, a CIA agent married to the retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The supposed purpose of leaking this classified information to the press was to retaliate against Mr. Wilson for having "debunked" (in his words) "the lies that led to war."

Now, as it happens, Mr. Libby was not charged with having outed Ms. Plame but only with having lied about when and from whom he first learned that she worked for the CIA. Moreover, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor who brought the indictment against him, made a point of emphasizing that "this indictment is not about the war":

This indictment is not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

This is simply an indictment that says, in a national-security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person--a person, Mr. Libby--lied or not.

No matter. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, spoke for a host of other opponents of the war in insisting:

This case is bigger than the leak of classified information. It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president.

Yet even stipulating--which I do only for the sake of argument--that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Mr. Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Mr. Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.

How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was "a slam dunk." This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Mr. Tenet had the backing of all 15 agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with "high confidence" was that "Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions."

The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel and--yes--France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix--who headed the U.N. team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past--lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:

The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km [105 miles] southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.

Mr. Blix now claims that he was only being "cautious" here, but if, as he now also adds, the Bush administration "misled itself" in interpreting the evidence before it, he at the very least lent it a helping hand.

So, once again, did the British, the French and the Germans, all of whom signed on in advance to Secretary of State Colin Powell's reading of the satellite photos he presented to the U.N. in the period leading up to the invasion. Mr. Powell himself and his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, now feel that this speech was the low point of his tenure as secretary of state. But Mr. Wilkerson (in the process of a vicious attack on the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense for getting us into Iraq) is forced to acknowledge that the Bush administration did not lack for company in interpreting the available evidence as it did:

I can't tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can't. I've wrestled with it. [But] when you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical-weapons ASP--Ammunition Supply Point--with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they're there, you have to conclude that it's a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the UN inspectors wheeling in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP, and everything is changed, everything is clean. . . . But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [Tenet's deputy] was convinced, that what we were presented [for Powell's UN speech] was accurate.

Going on to shoot down a widespread impression, Mr. Wilkerson informs us that even the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as INR, was convinced:

People say, well, INR dissented. That's a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That's all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios.

In explaining its dissent on Iraq's nuclear program, the INR had, as stated in the NIE of 2002, expressed doubt about:

Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes [which are] central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program. . . . INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors . . . in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program.

But, according to Wilkerson:

The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by God, we did it to this rpm, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?

In short, and whether or not it included the secret heart of Hans Blix, "the consensus of the intelligence community," as Mr. Wilkerson puts it, "was overwhelming" in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam definitely had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and that he was also in all probability well on the way to rebuilding the nuclear capability that the Israelis had damaged by bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981.

Additional confirmation of this latter point comes from Kenneth Pollack, who served in the National Security Council under Clinton. "In the late spring of 2002," Pollack has written:

I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes).

No wonder, then, that another conclusion the NIE of 2002 reached with "high confidence" was that "Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material." (Hard as it is to believe, let alone to reconcile with his general position, Joseph C. Wilson IV, in a speech he delivered three months after the invasion at the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, offhandedly made the following remark: "I remain of the view that we will find biological and chemical weapons and we may well find something that indicates that Saddam's regime maintained an interest in nuclear weapons.")

But the consensus on which Mr. Bush relied was not born in his own administration. In fact, it was first fully formed in the Clinton administration. Here is Bill Clinton himself, speaking in 1998:

If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program.

Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:

Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.

Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam:

He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.

Finally, Mr. Clinton's secretary of defense, William Cohen, was so sure Saddam had stockpiles of WMD that he remained "absolutely convinced" of it even after our failure to find them in the wake of the invasion in March 2003.

Nor did leading Democrats in Congress entertain any doubts on this score. A few months after Mr. Clinton and his people made the statements I have just quoted, a group of Democratic senators, including such liberals as Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urged the President "to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs."

Nancy Pelosi, the future leader of the Democrats in the House, and then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added her voice to the chorus:

Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.

This Democratic drumbeat continued and even intensified when Mr. Bush succeeded Mr. Clinton in 2001, and it featured many who would later pretend to have been deceived by the Bush White House. In a letter to the new president, a group of senators led by Bob Graham declared:

There is no doubt that . . . Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical, and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf war status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.

Sen. Carl Levin also reaffirmed for Mr. Bush's benefit what he had told Mr. Clinton some years earlier:

Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed, speaking in October 2002:

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed as well:

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. . . . We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.

Even more striking were the sentiments of Bush's opponents in his two campaigns for the presidency. Thus Al Gore in September 2002:

We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.

And here is Mr. Gore again, in that same year:

Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

Now to John Kerry, also speaking in 2002:

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force--if necessary--to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.

Perhaps most startling of all, given the rhetoric that they would later employ against Mr. Bush after the invasion of Iraq, are statements made by Sens. Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, also in 2002:

Kennedy: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

Byrd: "The last U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical- and biological-warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons."

Liberal politicians like these were seconded by the mainstream media, in whose columns a very different tune would later be sung. For example, throughout the last two years of the Clinton administration, editorials in the New York Times repeatedly insisted that "without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year [and] future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again."

The Times was also skeptical of negotiations, pointing out that it was "hard to negotiate with a tyrant who has no intention of honoring his commitments and who sees nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as his country's salvation."

So, too, the Washington Post, which greeted the inauguration of George W. Bush in January 2001 with this admonition:

Of all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous--or more urgent--than the situation in Iraq. Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with, or calling attention to, the almost complete unraveling of a decade's efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam Hussein and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction. That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf [where] intelligence photos . . . show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons.

All this should surely suffice to prove far beyond any even unreasonable doubt that Mr. Bush was telling what he believed to be the truth about Saddam's stockpile of WMD. It also disposes of the fallback charge that Mr. Bush lied by exaggerating or hyping the intelligence presented to him. Why on earth would he have done so when the intelligence itself was so compelling that it convinced everyone who had direct access to it, and when hardly anyone in the world believed that Saddam had, as he claimed, complied with the 16 resolutions of the Security Council demanding that he get rid of his weapons of mass destruction?

Another fallback charge is that Mr. Bush, operating mainly through Mr. Cheney, somehow forced the CIA into telling him what he wanted to hear. Yet in its report of 2004, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, while criticizing the CIA for relying on what in hindsight looked like weak or faulty intelligence, stated that it "did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities.

The March 2005 report of the equally bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission, which investigated intelligence failures on Iraq, reached the same conclusion, finding "no evidence of political pressure to influence the intelligence community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. . . . Analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments."

Still, even many who believed that Saddam did possess WMD, and was ruthless enough to use them, accused Mr. Bush of telling a different sort of lie by characterizing the risk as "imminent." But this, too, is false: Mr. Bush consistently rejected imminence as a justification for war. Thus, in the State of the Union address he delivered only three months after 9/11, Mr. Bush declared that he would "not wait on events while dangers gather" and that he would "not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer." Then, in a speech at West Point six months later, he reiterated the same point: "If we wait for threats to materialize, we will have waited too long." And as if that were not clear enough, he went out of his way in his State of the Union address in 2003 (that is, three months before the invasion), to bring up the word "imminent" itself precisely in order to repudiate it:

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

What of the related charge that it was still another "lie" to suggest, as Mr. Bush and his people did, that a connection could be traced between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda terrorists who had attacked us on 9/11? This charge was also rejected by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Contrary to how its findings were summarized in the mainstream media, the committee's report explicitly concluded that al Qaeda did in fact have a cooperative, if informal, relationship with Iraqi agents working under Saddam. The report of the bipartisan 9/11 commission came to the same conclusion, as did a comparably independent British investigation conducted by Lord Butler, which pointed to "meetings . . . between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al-Qaeda operatives."

Which brings us to Joseph C. Wilson, IV and what to my mind wins the palm for the most disgraceful instance of all.

The story begins with the notorious 16 words inserted--after, be it noted, much vetting by the CIA and the State Department--into Bush's 2003 State of the Union address:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

This is the "lie" Mr. Wilson bragged of having "debunked" after being sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to check out the intelligence it had received to that effect. Mr. Wilson would later angrily deny that his wife had recommended him for this mission, and would do his best to spread the impression that choosing him had been the vice president's idea. But Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, through whom Mr. Wilson first planted this impression, was eventually forced to admit that "Cheney apparently didn't know that Wilson had been dispatched." (By the time Mr. Kristof grudgingly issued this retraction, Mr. Wilson himself, in characteristically shameless fashion, was denying that he had ever "said the vice president sent me or ordered me sent.") And as for his wife's supposed nonrole in his mission, here is what Valerie Plame Wilson wrote in a memo to her boss at the CIA:

My husband has good relations with the PM [the prime minister of Niger] and the former minister of mines . . ., both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.

More than a year after his return, with the help of Mr. Kristof, and also Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, and then through an op-ed piece in the Times under his own name, Mr. Wilson succeeded, probably beyond his wildest dreams, in setting off a political firestorm.

In response, the White House, no doubt hoping to prevent his allegation about the 16 words from becoming a proxy for the charge that (in Mr. Wilson's latest iteration of it) "lies and disinformation [were] used to justify the invasion of Iraq," eventually acknowledged that the president's statement "did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address." As might have been expected, however, this panicky response served to make things worse rather than better. And yet it was totally unnecessary--for the maddeningly simple reason that every single one of the 16 words at issue was true.

That is, British intelligence had assured the CIA that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country of Niger. Furthermore--and notwithstanding the endlessly repeated assertion that this assurance has now been discredited--Britain's independent Butler commission concluded that it was "well-founded." The relevant passage is worth quoting at length:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium, and the British government did not claim this.

As if that were not enough to settle the matter, Mr. Wilson himself, far from challenging the British report when he was "debriefed" on his return from Niger (although challenging it is what he now never stops doing), actually strengthened the CIA's belief in its accuracy. From the Senate Intelligence Committee report:

He [the CIA reports officer] said he judged that the most important fact in the report [by Mr. Wilson] was that Niger officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Niger prime minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium.

And again:

The report on [Mr. Wilson's] trip to Niger . . . did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original CIA reports on the uranium deal.

This passage goes on to note that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research--which (as we have already seen) did not believe that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons--found support in Mr. Wilson's report for its "assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq." But if so, this, as the Butler report quoted above points out, would not mean that Iraq had not tried to buy it--which was the only claim made by British intelligence and then by Mr. Bush in the famous 16 words.

The liar here, then, was not Mr. Bush but Mr. Wilson. And Mr. Wilson also lied when he told the Washington Post that he had unmasked as forgeries certain documents given to American intelligence (by whom it is not yet clear) that supposedly contained additional evidence of Saddam's efforts to buy uranium from Niger. The documents did indeed turn out to be forgeries; but, according to the Butler report:

The forged documents were not available to the British government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine [that assessment].

More damning yet to Mr. Wilson, the Senate Intelligence Committee discovered that he had never laid eyes on the documents in question:

[Mr. Wilson] also told committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article . . . which said, "among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.' " Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.

To top all this off, just as Mr. Cheney had nothing to do with the choice of Mr. Wilson for the mission to Niger, neither was it true that, as Mr. Wilson "confirmed" for a credulous New Republic reporter, "the CIA circulated [his] report to the Vice President's office," thereby supposedly proving that Cheney and his staff "knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie." Yet--the mind reels--if Mr. Cheney had actually been briefed on Mr. Wilson's oral report to the CIA (which he was not), he would, like the CIA itself, have been more inclined to believe that Saddam had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.

So much for the author of the best-selling and much-acclaimed book whose title alone--"The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity"--has set a new record for chutzpah.

But there is worse. In his press conference on the indictment against Mr. Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald insisted that lying to federal investigators is a serious crime both because it is itself against the law and because, by sending them on endless wild-goose chases, it constitutes the even more serious crime of obstruction of justice. By those standards, Mr. Wilson--who has repeatedly made false statements about every aspect of his mission to Niger, including whose idea it was to send him and what he told the CIA upon his return; who was then shown up by the Senate Intelligence Committee as having lied about the forged documents; and whose mendacity has sent the whole country into a wild-goose chase after allegations that, the more they are refuted, the more they keep being repeated--is himself an excellent candidate for criminal prosecution.

And so long as we are hunting for liars in this area, let me suggest that we begin with the Democrats now proclaiming that they were duped, and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq--the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy--have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise and to brand as an ignominious defeat what is proving itself more and more every day to be a victory of American arms and a vindication of American ideals.

[Tikker]

coles notes please

[Zanchief]

Bush lied. This dude, and Martrae, don't think so.

[Durck]

Bush lied. This dude, and Martrae, don't think so.

PROVE IT! You CAN'T and NEITHER can the Democrats.

Why?

Because they know, after 2 years of Senate/Non-Partisan/Media scrutiny the fact of the matter comes down to this, Democrats are using this as a political ploy to garner favor for the 2006 elections. Its all about money, they cater to the base, they get contributions, they can establish a stronger means of taking back the house and senate.

For example... Here are one of the Democrats' Senator Doujour... trying to fenagle his way around some tough questions about the very subject... NOTE: This occured last Sunday.

WALLACE: Senator Rockefeller, the President says that Democratic critics, like you, looked at pre-war intelligence and came to the same conclusion that he did. In fact, looking back at the speech that you gave in October of 2002 in which you authorized the use of force, you went further than the President ever did. Let's watch.
SEN. ROCKEFELLER (October 10, 2002): "I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11th, that question is increasingly outdated."

WALLACE: Now, the President never said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. As you saw, you did say that. If anyone hyped the intelligence, isn't it Jay Rockefeller?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No. The – I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I'll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq – that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11. Now, the intelligence that they had and the intelligence that we had were probably different. We didn't get the Presidential Daily Briefs. We got only a finished product, a finished product, a consensual view of the intelligence community, which does not allow for agencies like in the case of the aluminum tubes, the Department of Energy said these aren't thick enough to handle nuclear power. They left that out and went ahead with they have aluminum tubes and they're going to develop nuclear power.

WALLACE: Senator, you're quite right. You didn't get the Presidential Daily Brief or the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief. You got the National Intelligence Estimate. But the Silberman Commission, a Presidential commission that looked into this, did get copies of those briefs, and they say that they were, if anything, even more alarmist, even less nuanced than the intelligence you saw, and yet you, not the President, said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: The Silberman Commission was absolutely prohibited by the President in his charge to them – he appointed them – from ever looking at the use of intelligence, whether it was misused, whether it was massaged to influence the American people to go along with a decision which he had long ago already decided to make.

WALLACE: But didn't they come to that conclusion which I just stated, that the Presidential Daily Brief was in fact more alarmist and less nuanced than the intelligence you saw?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: I don't know, because I never get to see, nor does Pat, the Presidential Daily Brief. All I know is that we don't get the intelligence that they do. We are called the Senate Intelligence Committee. We get a lot more than the rest of the Senate, but it was incomplete as to what the President gets, and it was obviously entirely wrong, which raises the question, why was it wrong?

...

WALLACE: Senator Rockefeller, I want to play another clip from your 2002 speech authorizing the use of force, this time specifically on the question of Saddam's nuclear program. Here it is.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER (October 10, 2002): "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons. And will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years and he could have it earlier."

WALLACE: Now, by that point, Senator, you had read the National Intelligence Estimate, correct?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: In fact, there were only six people in the Senate who did, and I was one of them. I'm sure Pat was another.

WALLACE: Okay, but you had read that, and now we've read a declassified…

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: But Chris, let's a...

WALLACE: Can I just ask my question sir, and then you can answer as you choose. That report indicated there was an agreement – a disagreement among analysts about the nuclear program. The State Department had a lot more doubts than the CIA did about whether he was pursuing a nuclear program. You never mentioned those doubts. You came to the same conclusion the President did.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Because that – first of all, that National Intelligence Estimate was not called for by the Administration. It was called for by former Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Dick Durbin. We didn't receive it until just a couple of days before we voted. Then we had to go read it and compare it to everything else that we thought we'd learned about intelligence, and I did make that statement. And I did make that vote. But, Chris, the important thing is that when I started looking at the weapons of mass destruction intelligence along with Pat Roberts, I went down to the floor, and I said I made a mistake. I would have never voted yes if I knew what I know today.

WALLACE: But a lot of people – that's not the point of the investigation, Senator.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Chris, there's always the same conversation. You know it was not the Congress that sent 135,000 or 150,000 troops.

WALLACE: But you voted, sir, and aren't you responsible for your vote?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No.

WALLACE: You're not?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No. I'm responsible for my vote, but I'd appreciate it if you'd get serious about this subject, with all due respect. We authorized him to continue working with the United Nations, and then if that failed, authorized him to use force to enforce the sanctions. We did not send 150,000 troops or 135,000 troops. It was his decision made probably two days after 9/11 that he was going to invade Iraq. That we did not have a part of, and, yes, we had bad intelligence, and when we learned about it, I went down to the floor and said I would never have voted for this thing.

WALLACE: My only point sir, and I am trying to be serious about it, is as I understand Phase Two, the question is based on the intelligence you had, what were the statements you made? You had the National Intelligence Estimate which expressed doubts about Saddam's nuclear program, and yet you said he had a nuclear program. The President did the same thing.

The same rhetoric that was spewed all throughout the 90's, the same intelligence, researched, reviewed, analyzed by not just 1 or 2 countries, but many many countries, all came to the same conclusion... Iraq had WMD programs, and was doing its best to prevent U.N. discovery of the breadth of those programs, and weapons they may have manufactured.

Go Google this.



See that?

Google will take you back in time to 1998, the last time prior to the invasion that the US and Saddam Hussein had a major confrontation. The Google search string Clinton Iraq 1998 will bring up 3.5 million hits about that conflict, during which pretty much every prominent Democrat expressed his or her belief that Saddam had or was developing WMD and was a threat because of it.

No one believed then or since that any US action including Operation Desert Fox in December 1998 completely destroyed Saddam's WMD programs. So if the Democrats believed in those weapons back then, why are they claiming to have been fooled by Bush into believing in them in 2002 and 2003?

From Bush's Speech at Elmendorf Yesterday...

Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war, but it is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American people. Leaders in my administration and members of the United States Congress from both political parties looked at the same intelligence on Iraq, and reached the same conclusion: Saddam Hussein was a threat.
Let me give you some quotes from three senior Democrat leaders: First, and I quote, "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons." Another senior Democrat leader said, "The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as Saddam Hussein is in power." Here's another quote from a senior Democrat leader: "Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think the President is approaching this in the right fashion." EDIT: See if you can name who quoted those - Duck

They spoke the truth then, and they're speaking politics now. (Applause.)

The truth is that investigations of intelligence on Iraq have concluded that only one person manipulated evidence and misled the world -- and that person was Saddam Hussein. ***

Some of our elected leaders have opposed this war all along. I disagreed with them, but I respect their willingness to take a consistent stand. Yet some Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force are now rewriting the past. They are playing politics with this issue and they are sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy. And that's irresponsible.

As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them into war continue to stand behind them. (Applause.) Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough. (Applause.) And our troops deserve to know that whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our nation is united, and we will settle for nothing less than victory. (Applause.)

I think he hits the nail on the head. And I think most of you want to beleive what is ever best to serve your anti-american, anti-bush, leftist, socialistic agenda.

-Duck

[Zanchief]

Hehe you still think liberalism is anti-american, how cute. Do you beleive in witches too?

[Goose_Man]

Hehe you still think liberalism is anti-american, how cute. Do you beleive in witches too?

Way to miss the entire point of his post and only see what you wanted to see. Classic!

[Tikker]

it doesn't change the fact he's right(zanchief)


seriously tho, you're stupid if you think that the war in Iraq was about WMD, or emminent danger to America or its allies

[Durck]

Way to miss the entire point of his post and only see what you wanted to see. Classic!

Of course he misses the point. He won't read it because he will be faced with facts. Facts which he cannot dispute. Quotes from time, videotaped, recorded and catalogued for all time.

Hehe you still think liberalism is anti-american, how cute. Do you beleive in witches too?

Liberalism isn't anti-american. Promoting a lie to undermine your country is. Liberalism is NOT Leftwing, extreme radicalism that so deeply permeates the far-left now.

The Bush Lied for Oil Meme is old. You radicals want to paint Bush (aka THE DEVIL(tm)) as an evil doer, because you hate him. Hate I note, not dislike, disrespect. It's hate. Otherwise, you would not spread these lies.

The facts speak for themselves.

-Duck

[Zanchief]

Hehe you still think liberalism is anti-american, how cute. Do you beleive in witches too?

Way to miss the entire point of his post and only see what you wanted to see. Classic!

I'm sorry I don't have the time to take 15 minutes out of my work day to read some pompous asshole explain to me why democrats are ruining America.

Bush says 'I have proof of WMDs'

Everyone else says 'Cool, can we see?'

Bush says 'Nein, Top Secret.'

Everyone says 'K if you say so.'

Bush was wrong. Did he lie? Maybe not in a sense that makes him culpable. But don't try to convince me that he didn't have every intention of going to war no matter what infoz his cronies cooked up for him.

[Zanchief]

Way to miss the entire point of his post and only see what you wanted to see. Classic!

Of course he misses the point. He won't read it because he will be faced with facts. Facts which he cannot dispute. Quotes from time, videotaped, recorded and catalogued for all time.

Hehe you still think liberalism is anti-american, how cute. Do you beleive in witches too?

Liberalism isn't anti-american. Promoting a lie to undermine your country is. Liberalism is NOT Leftwing, extreme radicalism that so deeply permeates the far-left now.

The Bush Lied for Oil Meme is old. You radicals want to paint Bush (aka THE DEVIL(tm)) as an evil doer, because you hate him. Hate I note, not dislike, disrespect. It's hate. Otherwise, you would not spread these lies.

The facts speak for themselves.

-Duck

Yes, I agree, it was wrong of us crazy radicals to have brought up this issue.

To the torture chamber for you, Mart. You anti-American pinko slut. (I added the slut part for flavour)

[Durck]

I'm sorry I don't have the time to take 15 minutes out of my work day to read some pompous asshole explain to me why democrats are ruining America.

Ahh, but you see. I never once said Democrats were ruining America. I showed that the current Bush Lied Meme is a ploy to garner favor for the Democrats with the Dem Base, for the 2006 elections. And I showed, how many democrats used the same logic that Bush did when he came to his conclusion in 2002/3.

I only once mentioned at the end, far-left radicalism and anti-patriotic behavior and socialism. It was one sentence out of over a hundred. Which is the only one you read.

But then again, why waste your time, reading the drivel of a pompous asshole, especially when he is correct?

-Duck

[Zanchief]

I only once mentioned at the end, far-left radicalism and anti-patriotic behavior and socialism. It was one sentence out of over a hundred. Which is the only one you read.

I skimmed. It seemed like a waste of my time.

[ClakarEQ]

The dems aren't doing anything wrong. They are playing politics like good ole boys.

It would be no different had the tables been turned, reps would do exactly what the dems are doing. Don't get all pissy cause we are taking advantage of the situation.

I like what they are doing because I don't like Mr. Bush (I don't hate the man, I just dislike him and think he is a terrible leader). You know, the rest of the country (60+%) think the man is a tool now as well.

So go ahead and pick out the dem here or there and call them a liar all you want. In the end it won't matter Bush will go down (as I've said before) as one of the WORST US presidents of all time. It doesn't matter whos face was suppose to get egged, Bush has the target on his back and there is no shaking it off now, he is SCREWED.

[kaharthemad]

Hehe you still think liberalism is anti-american, how cute. Do you beleive in witches too?

Way to miss the entire point of his post and only see what you wanted to see. Classic!

I'm sorry I don't have the time to take 15 minutes out of my work day to read some pompous asshole explain to me why democrats are ruining America.

Bush says 'I have proof of WMDs'

Everyone else says 'Cool, can we see?'

Bush says 'Nein, Top Secret.'

Everyone says 'K if you say so.'

Bush was wrong. Did he lie? Maybe not in a sense that makes him culpable. But don't try to convince me that he didn't have every intention of going to war no matter what infoz his cronies cooked up for him.

Ok consider this Zan. Last time we gave TS information of this magnitude to the Senate and HOR it costed alot lives. Want the facts? Simple Military History.

Back in World War II The navy was having very good success with thier submarine corp. Tonnage of ships sank were at a all time high. at the mid point of the war with the German U-Boats We had 0 casualties in the Pacific and Eurpeon Theatre. The main reason why was that the Depth charges both enemies set were too shallow. The information of our success was listed as TS and no one except for the Submariners and the Joint Chiefs knew about it.

Now comes the Senate and House of Representitives. They demanded to know the status of the Naval confrontations. The Joint Chiefs and the President at the time let slip the reason for the submarine success rate.

2 months later we had 12 submarines sank by depth charges. For the most part the Capital Hill can not be trusted with any classified information more secure then the waist band size of the President. Time and time again informing Congress of more than they need to know has cost many lives.

One thing you have to remember is a Demoratic Senate voted and aprroved to invdae Iraq. They were given information from the president and the CIA colaberating(sp?) everything that was said. Great Briton Secret Service, and the French all had the same information, so did the UN inteligence. We decided to go in.

Lets take a look at other underlying problems with CIA functions. The CIA was basically gutted in the late 90's and a process of check and balances we changed. The change implemented restricted information between service agencies. Flow of information is paramount in any inteligence service had we not had this change FBI and CIA would have shown minor discrepancies between information, however the information we had would still have been enough to go in since we had information from France Great Briton, and UN weapons inspectors. CIA had information that was brought up to the Joint Chiefs and the President. It was also brought up to the Inteligence Commitee. All agreed that invading the country was the right course of action.

You also have to look at what was found. In the last 2 years of Iraq we have found multiple WMD lab sites. VMX rocket canisters for dispersing Bio and chemical gasses ver a massive area. We have had 2 liters of Saren Gas found on the street killing one Marine before disfusing was done. Multiple signs that the WMD's were never destroyed but proof that they had them.

Lets look at the Saren gas that was found. this Gas only has a shelf life of 3 months before it breaks down into chemical compounds and rendered harmless. This was found 8 months after the invasion. So who planted it? The stuff is extremely unstable and bouncing it around in a jeep is not conducive to good health and clean living.

There are or were WMD's there. No proof of disposal. So where did they go? I think we need to concentrate on where they went. the Iraqi's had quite a long time to move that shit to another area or another country. Fact is noone knows where they went.

I know alot of people said that we should have waited for the UN inspectors to go back in again. They were kicked out and bulked 26 times since Desert Storm. Refusal to inspect certain areas deamed 'religous' and of national security were running practice. Dont believe me? Look at the UN inspections for the last 10 years.

So do we go back in and poke the problem with a stick. Or do we use logic and remove the tumor?

[Martrae]

I wonder how many commenting actually bothered to read the article.

[Zanchief]

I wonder how many commenting actually bothered to read the article.

Not I, nor did I read any of the replies that were over 3 or 4 sentences.

But that that doesn't mean I don't have 100 smart ass answers.

[Tikker]

I went back and read it, and it didn't really say anything new


just the same old gargbage

if you're a Dem dubya lied

If you're a republican, you believe in WMD



if you're anyone other than american, you know it was for oil

[Captain Insano]

This whole discussion is so fucking old...

Both the dems and the reps backed the war in Iraq plain and simple.

The dems are now using it as a tool to make the reps look stupid in order to get the house/senate back in 2008.

The reps are really fighting the war for control of oil, which unfortunately is critical to the continued economic growth and stability of our fine economy... A blindingly clear fact that no liberal would admit to.


If the godamn left really wants to do some good for the country find an alternative fuel source and end this countries fucking dependance on foreign oil; then we can pull out of the godamn middle east once and for all and let the rags rot in their hell hole.

Until the above happens we will continue to fight wars over oil regardless of the morality of it all. The fact remains that if prices had hit 20 dollars a gallon at the pump every middle class shmuck, liberals included, would be behind this war.

[Ouchyfish]

I'm sorry I don't have the time to take 15 minutes out of my work day to read some pompous asshole explain to me why democrats are ruining America.

Fucking pot callin the kettle black. Add up the amount of time you waste with your harebrained Canadian liberal vomit you lay on this board on any given day.

If the godamn left really wants to do some good for the country find an alternative fuel source and end this countries fucking dependance on foreign oil; then we can pull out of the godamn middle east once and for all and let the rags rot in their hell hole.

Another Bush campaign promise.

[Zanchief]

I'm sorry I don't have the time to take 15 minutes out of my work day to read some pompous asshole explain to me why democrats are ruining America.

Fucking pot callin the kettle black. Add up the amount of time you waste with your harebrained Canadian liberal vomit you lay on this board on any given day.

He can post all he want's I'm just not gonna read it.

Harebrained Canadian liberal vomit? I usually stay out of CC because of all the angry, sad as shit conservatives that write novels about the evils of liberalism.

Any in this thread?

[Durck]

So go ahead and pick out the dem here or there and call them a liar all you want. In the end it won't matter Bush will go down (as I've said before) as one of the WORST US presidents of all time. It doesn't matter whos face was suppose to get egged, Bush has the target on his back and there is no shaking it off now, he is SCREWED.

Such words were spoken about Ronald Reagan. Such words were spoken about Bill Clinton. Ronald Reagan is remember as the President that brought down Communism. I doubt, either of the 2 (Clinton or Bush) will be remembered as the worst president ever.

And... how can President Bush be Screwed?

He isn't running for re-election. He is rich. He will get his Presidential library. He will retire to his ranch in Texas. He is still relatively young. I doubt he will be anything other than like his father, a respected ex-president, and strong political influence, playing in the backfield.

-Duck

[Tikker]

hang on


Reagan brought down communism?

word on the street is that the Chinese disagree with you


ps, your narrowmindedness is showing Durck. Political ideas other than democracy, or a republic are not evil entities that anyone should attack. thanks for reminding us why most of the world has no respect for a big portion of americans!

[ClakarEQ]

Clinton nor Reagan (nor Bush Sr.) were never disliked so much by the American public as Bush has been. I'll admit I don't have the facts but I do recall hearing that no president has had such low approval ratings as Bush has had in the past 30-40 years or something. (found a link), I should have said never in all of US history has a pres has such PISS F'IN POOR RATINGS ROFLMAO
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Apr11.html

The guy is a dead duck before his time and only has himself to blame.

I agree the guy is set for life and all of that though, and the funny thing is all he ever wanted was his 15mins of fame show dear ole Dad he had what it took, that whole leading the country into a downward spiral was just icing on the cake /chaching.

BTW heavy sarcasim abounds in this post.

[Lyion]

Reagan ended the Cold War, not communism.

Why do I get the feeling the Canadians here get less of a clear picture of things from their hugely biased news than Paul Martin's accountants.

[Zanchief]

Why do I get the feeling the Canadians here get less of a clear picture of things from their hugely biased news than Paul Martin's accountants.

Probably because you're clueless.