posted on June 12, 2003 08:49:05 AM new
Weapons of Mass Destruction: Coalition claims face the test of time
Justin Thompson, CBC News Online | June 10, 2003
On June 5, 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush vowed to prove to the world that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. "We'll reveal the truth," he told a group of U.S. troops in Doha, Qatar. It was this belief - that Iraq held such weapons - that Bush and like-minded leaders pointed to as justification for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
But questions remain. Months after the coalition declared victory in the Iraq war, the U.S. has yet to reveal anything definitive to prove the allegations. Here is a look at how some of these allegations have stood the test of time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THEN
"The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving. From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the UN inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves."
-George W. Bush's state of the union address, Jan. 28, 2003
NOW
"Here we are in June of 2003. Show me the weapons; where are they? What evidence did this administration have to spend $63 billion in taxpayers' money? What evidence did this administration have to put the lives of American servicewomen and men on the line?"
-U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, June 5, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THEN
"There is already a mountain of evidence that Saddam Hussein is gathering weapons for the purpose of using them. And adding additional information is like adding a foot to Mount Everest."
-Ari Fleischer, White House spokesperson, Sept. 6, 2002
NOW
"Iraq's the size of the state of California. It's got tunnels, caves, all kinds of complexes."
-George W. Bush, saying it may take a while, but the U.S. will eventually locate an arsenal of weapons that Washington suspects is there. May 3, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THEN
"It's going to take time to find them, but we know he had them. And whether he destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we're going to find out the truth. One thing is for certain: Saddam Hussein no longer threatens America with weapons of mass destruction."
-George W. Bush, speaking at a weapons factory in Ohio, April 25, 2003
NOW
"There is a long list of items unaccounted for, but it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists, just because it is unaccounted for."
-UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, in his final report on weapons inspections in Iraq, June 5, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THEN
Baghdad builds and hides "an arsenal for conquest and mass murder."
-George W. Bush, March 8, 2003
"British forces have made significant discoveries in recent days which show categorically that Iraqi troops are prepared for the use of such horrific weapons,"
-British Secretary of State for Defence Geoff Hoon telling reporters in London that British troops uncovered a cache of more than 100 chemical warfare suits in Iraq, March 27, 2003
NOW
"Coalition forces have uncovered the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program. Kurdish forces in late April 2003 took into custody a specialized tractor-trailer near Mosul and subsequently turned it over to U.S. military control.
The U.S. military discovered a second mobile facility equipped to produce BW agent in early May at the al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development, and Engineering facility in Mosul. Although this second trailer appears to have been looted, the remaining equipment, including the fermentor, is in a configuration similar to the first plant.
U.S. forces in late April also discovered a mobile laboratory truck in Baghdad. The truck is a toxicology laboratory from the 1980s that could be used to support BW or legitimate research."
-CIA report, May 28, 2003
(Later CIA tests of one of the trailers came up "negative for five standard (biological warfare) agents, including Bacillus anthracis, and for growth media for those agents." )
The Republican majority in the US Congress has rejected calls for a formal investigation into whether the government misread or inflated threats posed by Iraq before going to war.
They said any such inquiry could harm the intelligence agencies, and that the routine oversight work of the Intelligence and Armed Services committees would be enough to evaluate the Iraqi threat.
The move comes amid mounting concern in Congress and internationally over why weapons of mass destruction that President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said posed an imminent threat have not been found.
~
Does this surprise anybody? Blair is also trying to hide.
I for one am glad you take the time to post these things. I barely have time to read the newspaper these days. The skeletons will come out of the closet. It's only a matter of time now. Once one birdie sings, they all join in. I have a feeling there will be a lot of people in for a rude awakening. You know who you are.
Cheryl
My religion is simple, my religion is kindness.
--Dalai Llama
posted on June 12, 2003 01:34:11 PM new"Helen - I for one am glad you take the time to post these things."
Me too Helen! Your posts/links are right to the point!
Cheryl, the people in for the "rude awakening", don't care if WOMD aren't found. They reason that none have been located either from not enough time, or they're still buried somewhere in secret locations. This pov could go on forever, which it probably will.
posted on June 12, 2003 02:33:57 PM new
Come one, come all!
Bush Coming to NYC on June 23rd! Help us greet him!!!
Monday, June 23rd 2003 5:00 pm
NYC, New York
President Bush will be holding a fundraising event for his re-election campaign on the evening of Monday, June 23rd at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers.
Please help us support a permited rally organized by Planned Parenthood of NYC at 5:00 pm. This is an excellent opportunity to join forces and demonstrate to the world our opposition to the Bush administration's anti-choice, anti-rights and anti-peace policies.
For more information please contact:
UFPJNY: 212-603-3700
PPNYC: Gina Gambone, 212-274-7247
Location:
Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers W.52nd Street and Seventh Avenue NYC New York
Contact:
United for Peace and Justice
[email protected]
212-603-3700
Sponsored By:
Planned Parenthood of NYC United for Peace and Justice NY http://unitedforpeace.org
I have removed my tagline because it offended people.... But I am saddened, people wanted it gone for how it read, not for what it said. That is the sad thing
[ edited by mlecher on Jun 12, 2003 02:42 PM ]
[ edited by mlecher on Jun 12, 2003 02:42 PM ]
posted on June 12, 2003 09:03:42 PM new This controversy has now given rise to the question: Can preemptive war be legitimately waged knowing that the data on which the preemptive element relies could be completely inaccurate?
If the WMD issue becomes scandalous and represents a large percentage of headlines for weeks, the chances of either Washington or London being able to convince the world that another country -- such as Iran, Syria, or even North Korea -- is an imminent threat are low. In the long run, this situation may lead to a significant loss of credibility for not only George Bush and Tony Blair as leading international statesmen but for their respective countries as well.
The Bush and Blair governments may have weakened their positions by forcing the invasion of Iraq. Barring some massive discovery revealing large stockpiles of WMD, the global forces opposed to the imperialist nature of the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq, will only be strengthened by this contentious atmosphere that even has those who typically support government policy crying foul about the unfolding WMD/cooked intelligence drama. This could lead to grave political fall-outs for both leaders.
A nightmare situation for the U.S. would be a continuing lack of WMD along with an increasingly unstable and unresolved Iraq. Not only would this put undue strains on a U.S. possibly in the position of striking another country, but it would also provide an example of what happens when the U.S. induces "regime change." Such a situation may very well lead to a strategic advantage and diplomatic edge for countries such as Iran when dealing with U.S. advances. U.S. threats will ring more hollow when backed by the faltering example of a festering Iraq. This is the last thing Washington wants on the world geopolitical stage as it goes ahead with its policy of active engagement in the Middle East.
posted on June 13, 2003 05:49:02 AM new
If it was all about thr regime change, the ridding of an awful murdering leader, then why isn't there a call to go to the Congo? over 800,000 people have been killed, many hacked to death by machetes....
Of course, they are all black people, but if the neo-conservatives get their way, think of all the lost slave labor....
The US military's arrogance is apparent here in spades.
How?
First, there is an assumption that all the resistance is based on loyalty to Saddam. Some, clearly, may be coming from the Baathist remnants, but you'd have to be well, insane, to think that's the sole source of opposition. US troops are widely mistrusted. It's not that every Iraqi hates us like Afghans hated the Russians, or that everyone is opposed to US help. The problem is that we're walking all over their national pride with our occupation and no matter how war weary they are, and 23 years of war is a nightmare for any country, there will always be enough people willing to kill Americans if they feel there is no choice.
We don't speak the language, our conceits ignore their history and what we don't understand about the culture, we have contempt for. Hejabs, diet, habits, Americans, especially the young and moderately educated, unworldly privates enforcing American rule, either disregard or disrespect. This would be a bad situation no matter what we did, no matter our motives. But we are in a situation where simple acts of culture are going to be taken as mortal insults.
The American administration still doesn't get that Iraq is a gun culture like the American West. You barge into a Dallas home on a random gun search, one day someone may shoot at you.
Second, Iraqis are not Afghans. They are educated, literate people who understand the West. They don't live in caves. The US cannot run them like they live in a hillside cave or a mud village. If we try, well, we get a war.
Third, where is our base of support? The Shia are watching and waiting, knowing the trouble the US is having with the Sunnis is small potatoes compared to the problems they could cause.
We're not in a quagmire....yet. But our troubles seem so French, an undermanned army trying to hold off a hostile population and the French had much more support in Vietnam and Algeria than we can hope for in Iraq.
Rounding up suspects like the French did so many times doesn't stop guerrilla warfare, it never does. Chalabi's latest claim, that Saddam's paying people to fight may well be true, but it's not the whole story.
If you read Iraqi history, a central truth emerges, that it is in the Iraqi national character to resist the Americans. Because our touch has not been completely repressive, we've gained a little time. But only in a neocon fantasy world, one where French and German troops join us in Iraq, can one expect this to last. Iraqis are fiercely independent and unlilke in Germany and Japan, where GI's screwed their way in to the hearts of the widows and teenage girls left behind, we aren't likely to have that kind of contact with their country.
Instead, we have sullen, broke young men in their 20's and 30's, watching and getting angrier by the day. They sit and wait for us to offend them, and once we do, they pounce. Paying them might keep them busy for a while, but you can't undo a culture which reveres a rebellion against colonial rule.
Fourth, 400,000 soldiers is a pile of trouble any way you cut it. And that was the active army. There may well be a million Iraqi combat veterans of age (17-40) to fight the Americans. Iraq is a militarized country which has fought war after war and filled with men who can handle a gun under fire. People forget that while they may not be great shots, they don't have to be. They have mortars and rockets and RPG's and are using them to good effect. No one knows what weapons the Shia clerics have.
posted on June 13, 2003 12:24:56 PM newAre you saying that Bush won't go after other countries that starve and slaughter their own people if they don't have oil mlecher?
Apparently. Heck the situation there doesn't even make a blip on American news...to busy trying to lick Bush's boots, which real hard considering the speed at which he is backpeddling. And every once and awhile one of news groups gets kicked in the chin.....
[ edited by mlecher on Jun 13, 2003 12:28 PM ]
posted on June 13, 2003 12:33:16 PM new
The end is near. Funny how quiet the Bush has been the last week. Its interesting to note that the ones doing the inestigations are all Republicans. Its also interesting that the Bush administration doesnt want the UN involved in looking for the WOMD.
posted on June 13, 2003 02:35:57 PM new
This poor guy has a story like Job.
DE-FLOCKED: An Iraqi Shepard filed a lawsuit against Donald
Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks for the loss of 17 family
members, and 200 sheep in a U.S. missile strike during the
War of Bush Aggression.
"The trial will be Iraq's first against US troops
because we believe they used excessive force
against the Iraqi people who cooperated with
the United States to topple Saddam Hussein's
regime," Abud Sarhan's lawyer told AFP.
Lawyer Rabah al-Alwani was approached by
Sarhan, 71 to file a suit against US Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General
Tommy Franks, commander of US forces in
Iraq, after the shepherd claimed a US missile
landed on his tent on April 4.
Days before, Sarhan had left his home village of
Al-Altash, near an Iraqi military base that was
heavily bombed by coalition warplanes.
He had set up a tent in the nearby desert to
host 20 of his family members and relatives in
three distinct sections, one for women, one for
men and the other for children, said his half-
brother Hamad Sarhan, 25, who was wounded
in the attack.
"We thought we would be safe there, There
were no military positions, only shepherds and
their flocks.
"Before the night prayer, a missile landed next
to us, shortly afterwards another one fell right
into the women's section.
"It was horrible. We could not make out whose
limbs were scattered ont he ground, " he said."
He filed the suit in the interim administration's newly
constituted civil court system in Iraq, and is seeking $200
million in damages. You think Rummy will use the Grateful
Dead defense?
posted on June 14, 2003 03:41:04 AM new
Helenjw
"Democrats are extremely irritated and angry -- pizzed off, finally!"
Do you really think think there's enough of them to make a difference?
Helenjw
"An Iraqi Shepard filed a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks for the loss of 17 family members, and 200 sheep in a U.S. missile strike during the
War of Bush Aggression"
Why do I feel he'll be happy to get those sheep back!!
posted on June 14, 2003 07:56:31 AM new
CIA Reassigns 2 Top Iraq Analysts but Denies the Move is Punitive
By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer
LA Times
WASHINGTON -- The CIA has reassigned two senior officials who oversaw its analysis on Iraq and the deposed regime's alleged banned weapons, a move that a CIA spokesman said was routine but that others portrayed as an "exile."
The officials served in senior positions in which they were deeply involved in assembling and assessing the intelligence on Iraq's alleged stocks of chemical and biological arms.
U.S. search teams have yet to find conclusive evidence that Iraq had such weapons in the months before the war -- an assertion that was the Bush administration's principal justification for the March invasion.
One of the officials was reassigned last week to the CIA's personnel department after spending the last several months heading the Iraq Task Force, a special unit set up to provide 24-hour support to military commanders during the war.
The other, a longtime analyst who had led the agency's Iraq Issue Group, was dispatched on an extended mission to Iraq. The group is responsible for the core analysis of all the intelligence the United States collects on Iraq.
CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said Friday that the changes were routine, and that it is "absolutely wrong to think this is somehow punitive or negative or indicative of anything other than a normal rotation." Citing security concerns, he asked that neither employee be identified by name.
But other intelligence sources offered a different account.
"Two of the key players on this problem have essentially been sent into deep exile," said one agency official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official added that the changes seemed designed to show the administration that "we're being responsive to charges that we did not perform well."
The failure so far to find banned weapons in Iraq has raised questions about whether the prewar intelligence was flawed or shaded to support the White House's desire to present a compelling case for war.
The agency's personnel moves come as congressional committees are reviewing the prewar intelligence, with some Democrats pushing for public hearings and a full-scale investigation.
Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee signed a letter this week seeking a meeting with the panel chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), in an effort to pressure him to drop his opposition to a full investigation.
Meanwhile, staffers on the House and Senate Intelligence committees are already poring over thousands of pages of prewar intelligence documents turned over by the CIA in recent days.
One Capitol Hill aide who has reviewed the material said there are troubling contradictions in the documents and statements. In some cases, records show officials reaching one conclusion on Iraq's weapons, only to offer a contradictory conclusion a few months later.
The aide declined to discuss specifics but said the tangled nature of the material is likely to add fuel to the controversy.
"It's all fodder for the Democrats," the aide said. "What they'll find is people having said things that aren't consistent with what they're saying now."
An intelligence official familiar with the Iraq assessments said congressional investigators are not likely to find documented proof that analysts were pressured to tailor their assessments.
"They'll be hard-pressed to find any kind of smoking gun, a case of somebody coming in and saying, 'I wrote it this way and it came back from the 7th floor telling me to write it another way,' " the official said, referring to the location at CIA headquarters where Director George J. Tenet and other top officials have offices.
Instead, the official compared the pressure analysts faced in the months preceding the war to that applied by lawyers "badgering the witness -- asking the question over and over and over again to the point where people get worn down."
Much of this pressure, the official said, came from top officials at the Pentagon, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Pentagon officials have repeatedly denied seeking to influence the intelligence on Iraq.
Tenet is said to have called a special meeting with the CIA's Iraq analysts on June 5, a session one source described as an attempt to clear the air at a time when top officials have been alarmed by anonymous complaints showing up in the press.
It is not clear whether the meeting came before or after the two senior officials were reassigned. Several intelligence sources said it was unusual for employees in such key assignments to move on to positions of equal or lesser prestige.
The woman who led the Iraq Issue Group had been there for less than a year, a relatively short stint. That sort of job has traditionally been a launching pad to higher rank. Winston P. Wiley, who went on to head the Directorate of Intelligence, had held a similar position during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Harlow, the CIA spokesman, said the woman "is moving on to an assignment in Iraq to support important issues out there." He noted that, as an expert on the country, she welcomed the opportunity to work there. Before Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled, he said, "we didn't have positions in Iraq."
The other employee was reassigned in part because the wartime task force is winding down, Harlow said. "This guy needed a new job and is going off to do recruiting [for the agency]. It's something he wanted to do, and it's something critically important to us."
Others questioned that explanation. A move to the personnel department, one former official said, "is usually not a step up."
The weapons controversy has exposed new fault lines between the White House and the intelligence community.
In a series of media appearances this week, senior White House officials including national security advisor Condoleezza Rice stressed that all of the administration's prewar claims came straight out of briefings from the CIA.
"You had a director of central intelligence that produced an estimate that said this regime had weapons of mass destruction," Rice said in a television interview.
This week, the White House put Tenet in charge of the ongoing weapons hunt, a job that had belonged to the Pentagon.
"They handed the whole ball to George," said one intelligence source familiar with the details of the assignment. He said the message being sent to Tenet seemed clear: "You said [the banned weapons] were there. You go find them."
Another congressional aide said the move reflected not only an eagerness to put Tenet on the hook for the weapons search mission, but also dissatisfaction with the way the Pentagon had managed the assignment.
"It's a little of both," the aide said, noting that the weapons search has been plagued by breakdowns, shortages of necessary equipment and infighting.
This week, Tenet tapped a former U.N. weapons inspector, David Kay, to serve as a "special advisor" to the search effort in Baghdad. The move was somewhat surprising from an administration that had openly derided the effectiveness of United Nations teams before the war.
Kay will report directly to Tenet and have authority over the 1,300-member Iraq Survey Group recently dispatched to step up the search.
Many in the intelligence community are now skeptical that stocks of anthrax, botulin, sarin gas or other agents Iraq was accused of producing will be found.
"It's not that they were never there or that we worked for years on erroneous information," one intelligence official said. Rather, there is growing concern that the nation's spy community missed the destruction of the materials because analysts were not prepared to consider Hussein capable of taking such a step.
"We didn't have the hypothesis that maybe this guy would decide it's too dangerous to have this stuff," the official said, noting that some think Hussein focused on preserving technology that would enable him to restart his programs later.
"If you save design work you can gin it back up pretty quickly," the official said. "The only one you can't gin up is nuclear."
The question of Iraq's nuclear activities has also become a source of friction between the agency and policymakers in the administration.
The Washington Post reported this week that the CIA failed to tell the White House that it was skeptical of claims that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from Niger. A diplomat sent by the agency to Niger to investigate the claims concluded that they were false.
Nevertheless, the claim was included in President Bush's State of the Union address in January. The documents that were the basis for the claims were subsequently shown to be forgeries.
The CIA says it did express skepticism about the uranium claims in numerous intelligence reports that were widely circulated within the administration before the president's speech.
posted on June 14, 2003 12:09:58 PM new
George W. Bush and his people used the fear and terror that still roils within the American people in the aftermath of 9/11 to fob off an unnerving fiction about a faraway nation, and then used that fiction to justify a war that killed thousands and thousands of people.
Latter-day justifications about "liberating" the Iraqi people or demonstrating the strength of America to the world do not obscure this fact. They lied us into a war that, beyond the death toll, served as the greatest Al Qaeda recruiting drive in the history of the world. They lied about a war that cost billions of dollars which could have been better used to bolster America's amazingly substandard anti-terror defenses. They are attempting, in the aftermath, to misuse the CIA by blaming them for all of it.
Blaming the CIA will not solve this problem, for the CIA is well able to defend itself. Quashing investigations in the House will not stem the questions that come now at a fast and furious clip.
They lied. Period. Trust a teacher on this. We can spot liars who have not done their homework a mile away.
posted on June 15, 2003 05:44:29 AM newIraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds
Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday June 15, 2003
The Observer
An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist. The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.
Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.'
The conclusion of the investigation ordered by the British Government - and revealed by The Observer last week - is hugely embarrassing for Blair, who had used the discovery of the alleged mobile labs as part of his efforts to silence criticism over the failure of Britain and the US to find any weapons of mass destruction since the invasion of Iraq.
The row is expected to be re-ignited this week with Robin Cook and Clare Short, the two Cabinet Ministers who resigned over the war, both due to give evidence to a House of Commons inquiry into whether intelligence was manipulated in the run-up to the war. It will be the first time that both have been grilled by their peers on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee over what the Cabinet was told in the run-up to the war.
MPs will be keen to explore Cook's explanation when he resigned that, while he believed Iraq did have some WMD capability, he did not believe it was weaponised.
The Prime Minister and his director of strategy and communications, Alastair Campbell, are expected to decline invitations to appear. While MPs could attempt to force them, this is now thought unlikely to happen.
The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, is expected to give evidence the week after.
The revelation that the mobile labs were to produce hydrogen for artillery balloons will also cause discomfort for the British authorities because the Iraqi army's original system was sold to it by the British company, Marconi Command & Control.
posted on June 15, 2003 07:10:48 AM new
Well just remember the last president to really screw a CIA crew over to cover his own butt was Kennedy. It's a really, really short sighted thing to do.
