Guzzo is the soulstrut MVP in my book. But just a note on labels. I consider myself a paleoliberal. I have no interest in cutting capital gains taxes, have no quarrel with activist judges if their activism is aimed at correcting social injustice or expanding the rights of minorities, would like to keep social security. I think corporations should not enjoy the same legal rights as individuals. As some of you may have noticed, I often make the case for nonviolent action. I don't believe in the end times, the literal translation of the bible or the evils of homosexuality. On a philosophical level I believe in positive and negative rights, but think they should apply universally.
My argument for the toppling of Saddam Hussein has been premised on liberal notions. For example, I have often invoked the case for the Kurds. I think that America cannot ignore its imperial legacy in mesopatamia and pretend we had nothing to do with Saddam's rise to power. We sold him grain credits after his campaign to depopulate his bread belt of Kurdish farmers. All of this is available by the way at the national security archives. On this recent nonsense about neoconservative deception and such--I would only say that the terms of the UN cease fire and subsequent resolutions required Saddam to meet confidence building measures, which he did not. The Downing Street memo only says that America was preparing for a war, which would be the correct assumption based on Saddam's prior actions. But regardless, you can all check the record yourselves, if you think that he had complied with his final opportunity. And as for Chalabi, really? Does anyone think this one man was able to deceive the entire American intelligence community? Does anyone think the intelligence community did not endorse in the broadest terms that Saddam was concealing a weapons program? And why are liberals all of the sudden rushing to the aid of the CIA? Have you have read the transcript from the Church Committee hearings?
On the big point about tolerance of so-called conservatives, I don't particularly mind most of it. But for the record, I don't read talking points. I don't swallow a particular line. My fillings are not hardwired to receive communiques from the RNC. Just as I think it's possible for most of you to reach your conclusions without the aid of apparats and partisan memoranda, it would be nice if some of my intellectual sparring partners could afford me the same courtesy. When people say I am just giving the Bush line, which I don't do, it's not much of an argument as an accusation of guilt by association. Reverse mccarthyism.
tripping dude. cite your source or fall the fuck back.
Ha! Heeeere we go!
I think he was referring to your hawkish stance on Israel, and against "terrorism".
I kinda picked that up too, these days there are lots of folks who are economically and socially liberal, yet very conservative when it comes to middle east affairs.
Sorry I guess I need to use quotation marks when referring to terrorism in order to be accepted by some of y'all folls. No thanks.
tripping dude. cite your source or fall the fuck back.
Ha! Heeeere we go!
I think he was referring to your hawkish stance on Israel, and against "terrorism".
I kinda picked that up too, these days there are lots of folks who are economically and socially liberal, yet very conservative when it comes to middle east affairs.
Sorry I guess I need to use quotation marks when referring to terrorism in order to be accepted by some of y'all folls. No thanks.
You are proving everyone's point in this thread man. Personally, I don't accept or not accept you, I just see you as being hawkish. That's not inherently a bad thing. Does that make you angry? Are you actually dovish on israel and I've just got it wrong?
tripping dude. cite your source or fall the fuck back.
Tyical right wing response to anyone who trys to say anything left of center on this site. You right wingers need to calm down and kick swearing at people. Have you ever heard of freedom of speech?
tripping dude. cite your source or fall the fuck back.
Ha! Heeeere we go!
I think he was referring to your hawkish stance on Israel, and against "terrorism".
I kinda picked that up too, these days there are lots of folks who are economically and socially liberal, yet very conservative when it comes to middle east affairs.
Sorry I guess I need to use quotation marks when referring to terrorism in order to be accepted by some of y'all folls. No thanks.
You are proving everyone's point in this thread man. Personally, I don't accept or not accept you, I just see you as being hawkish. That's not inherently a bad thing. Does that make you angry? Are you actually dovish on israel and I've just got it wrong?
On this recent nonsense about neoconservative deception and such--I would only say that the terms of the UN cease fire and subsequent resolutions required Saddam to meet confidence building measures, which he did not. The Downing Street memo only says that America was preparing for a war, which would be the correct assumption based on Saddam's prior actions. But regardless, you can all check the record yourselves, if you think that he had complied with his final opportunity.
From one of the Downing Street Memos 7/23/02
"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.[/b] The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.[/b] We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."
So there's a couple points here:
1) Publicly the administration said that they were NOT seeking a war by the Summer of 2002, but here the British are saying the decision has already been made. Vitamin, in your own arguments here on the Strut you said that the Bush administraiton was holding off until Iraq had finally failed the last round of U.N. inspections and then went to war. Here's the Brits, months and months before that saying that the U.S. had already decided on war and that they don't really car about the UN.
2) The U.S. was using intelligence to argue for war, not as a way to decide whether Iraq was a threat or not.
3) Yes, England agrees that Iraq had WMD, but it doesn't seem to be a threat as other countries are far more dangerous.
4) England wants to come up with a plan to use the UN weapons inspectors NOT to verify Iraq's compliance with disarming, but as a way to justify a war. I'm sure they shared this idea with the U.S.
Chalabi, really? Does anyone think this one man was able to deceive the entire American intelligence community?
No. You just set up an office in the Pentagon, not the CIA, where you can round up your own "intelligence".
FBI probes DOD office
"Two of the people interviewed are Bill Luti, former chief of OSP, and Harold Rhode of the Near East/South Asia office, according to participants in the investigation.
The NESA/OSP office was located on the fourth floor of the Pentagon, D ring, 7th corridor, according to Kwiatkowski, the former staffer.
According to one former senior U.S. intelligence official who maintained excellent contacts with serving U.S. intelligence officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, "Rhode practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalabi's office."
This same source quoted the intelligence official with the CPA as saying, "Rhode was observed by CIA operatives as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel," and that the information that the intelligence officials overheard him passing to Israel was "mind-boggling," this source said.
It dealt with U.S. plans, military deployments, political projects, discussion of Iraq assets, and a host of other sensitive topics, the former senior U.S. intelligence official said.
Does anyone think the intelligence community did not endorse in the broadest terms that Saddam was concealing a weapons program?
I can believe this from the 2002 CIA Report:
"Although Saddam probably does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them."
"Without such material from abroad, Iraq probably would not be able to make a weapon until the last half of the decade."
and even,
"If Baghdad acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year."
But to then go here:
"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
-Condi Rice
And here,
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
-Dubya
after it was widely known throughout the "intelligence community" as well as the administration that,
"In fact, the Niger story, as documented by journalist Seymour Hersh (New Yorker, 3/31/03) and others, was based on crudely forged documents. In addition, the administration's own investigation in March 2002 concluded that the story was bogus. As one former State Department official put it, "This wasn't highly contested. There weren't strong advocates on the other side. It was done, shot down" (Time, 7/21/03)."
To follow up on that if Congress looks at the right places they CAN find that the Bush administration exaggerated and made claims about Iraq that did not have any backing.
Here's the Bush's argument:
After 9/11 the U.S. could not let a country like Iraq that had WMD and a Nuke program exist that might end up giving those weapons to terrorists. 2 part argument: 1) They have WMD/Nukes, 2) They have ties to terrorists.
WMD/Nukes
1) While the U.S. and other countries all thought that Iraq had some kind of WMD program, the U.S. is the ONLY country that said it was a threat. In the quoted Downing St. documents from England, they say that Iraq isn't much of a threat. Congress probably won't look at other intelligence agencies and countries however so this will get passed over.
2) The CIA had its head up its ass when it came to Iraq and WMD. Any little rumor they took as fact about the country. Yet, the Bush Administration took the worst case scenarios from the intelligence community and tended to exaggerate or only talk about those points. Case in point, the nuclear program, as Cortez just quoted the intelligence community said that Iraq had probably restarted its nuclear program (based on shady evidence but I won't go into that here), and said that perhaps if the country got enough material they could have a bomb within a couple years. The Bush administration took that and started saying that Iraq could have a bomb within a year and that the U.S. didn't want to see a "mushroom cloud" said by Rice, and others. That's exaggeration.
3) Here's where Congress though can find out right exaggeration and unsupported claims against Iraq, and that's about its links with terrorism. Bush claimed and implied that Iraq had ties with Al Qaeda. There, if Congress looks, they can find exaggeration and outright deception.
Here were the administration's claims:
A) Iraq was connected to the World Trade Center bombing
B) Atta, head of the 9/11 hijackers met with Iraq intelligence in Prague
C) Iraq gave weapons, bomb making and WMD training to Al Qaeda
D) Iraq and Al Qaeda met to cooperate
E) Iraq was therefore connected to 9/11
A) This was a claim made by Wolfowitz, and later taken up by Libby. They could not find any evidence behind it, yet continued to make the claim
B) Again, a claim made by Wolfowitz and taken up by Cheney all the way up to late 2004 I believe and I just heard a neocon on PBS News make talk about this 2 weeks ago. Wolfowitz's OWN investigation could find no evidence. Yet they still made it over and over. Cheney said that the intelligence agencies couldn't find any evidence that the meeting did NOT take place, therefore he could say it happened. What the fuck kind of argument is that? You can't find evidence that it did happen you dipshits!
C) This claim was based upon 1 Al Qaeda operative in custody who the DIA thought was lying all the way back in 2002. Yet the other intelligence agencies and the administration jumped upon it, and it ended up in Powell's speech to the U.N.
D) The 9/11 Commission found that Iraq and Al Qaeda met in the early 90s, but nothing came of it. The Bush administration claimed that these meetings went right up to 9/11 almost. Complete exaggeration.
E) Bush again and again implied that Iraq was behind 9/11. There is no evidence.
So, you can see that the administration took the worst case scenarios about WMD/Nukes and only talked about those points in public, and when it came to Iraq and Al Qaeda/Terrorism, they were full of shit.
i just got this email from a co-worker (at a post production studio where we watch shit like mtv's fab life, laguna beach etc...) the other day.
co- worker in mocking "rapper guy" slang: "Yo, yo why it be cool to talk shit bout some stuck up, pompus, $200,000 car drivin, blond haired, blue eyed, "I'm better than you" yuppie D Bag but the second that D Bag be black you have no problem w/ him & I'm a racist? Yo check that shit. You be the one brakin shit down 2 race. I see. A stuck up flashy white actor on Fab Life is just an ass hole that you would say something like "needs a stiff sledge hammer to the face" about but a stuck up flashy black hip hop artist on Fab Life (jadakiss wearing a harley davidson tshirt and some big piece around his neck) is "representing a community" (i was referring to the modern hip hop community's overall aesthetic) (or what ever the hell you said). What???? Yo, check that. Racist is a big word. Watch where you throw it. Word."
me: from someone who's frequently referred to asians as "chink chonks", praised and glorified the image of confederate flag wavin' rednecks and has vocalized other various racial epithets / slurs (if i could correctly recall,. shit you've said in the past i'd be herer all night writing this)....if you call asians chink chonks what do i think you say about other ethnicities.... you really expect me to think of you as anything less than a racist? come on....... when you say the kind of shit you've said in the past... it sometimes offends me. i should've nipped this in the bud along time ago when it'd first come to my attention. but knowing you're such a cool mf'er.... it's hard to do... nobody want's to offend nobody? right? so i'll tell you again... please stop saying some of the shit you say. it offends me.
i just got this email from a co-worker (at a post production studio where we watch shit like mtv's fab life, laguna beach etc...) the other day.
co- worker in mocking "rapper guy" slang: "Yo, yo why it be cool to talk shit bout some stuck up, pompus, $200,000 car drivin, blond haired, blue eyed, "I'm better than you" yuppie D Bag but the second that D Bag be black you have no problem w/ him & I'm a racist? Yo check that shit. You be the one brakin shit down 2 race. I see. A stuck up flashy white actor on Fab Life is just an ass hole that you would say something like "needs a stiff sledge hammer to the face" about but a stuck up flashy black hip hop artist on Fab Life (jadakiss wearing a harley davidson tshirt and some big piece around his neck) is "representing a community" (i was referring to the modern hip hop community's overall aesthetic) (or what ever the hell you said). What???? Yo, check that. Racist is a big word. Watch where you throw it. Word."
me: from someone who's frequently referred to asians as "chink chonks", praised and glorified the image of confederate flag wavin' rednecks and has vocalized other various racial epithets / slurs (if i could correctly recall,. shit you've said in the past i'd be herer all night writing this)....if you call asians chink chonks what do i think you say about other ethnicities.... you really expect me to think of you as anything less than a racist? come on....... when you say the kind of shit you've said in the past... it sometimes offends me. i should've nipped this in the bud along time ago when it'd first come to my attention. but knowing you're such a cool mf'er.... it's hard to do... nobody want's to offend nobody? right? so i'll tell you again... please stop saying some of the shit you say. it offends me.
he never responded to me.
you're co-worker deserves to have a steel pipe wrapped around his skull
Paul, I think most of us are very tolerent of your views, we just disagree. Because this is soulstut you will be attacked personally and obscenely.
Which, after all, is just a form of intolerence.
Because this is soulstut you will be attacked personally and obscenely
Paul,
What I think Dan was trying to say is that there are some very opinionated people on this board, that has nothing to do with their political or musical tastes for that matter. I mean personally, I was told that none of my reviews were legitimate at all because I didn't like Be Bop. Another time, because I'd given one album a bad review I was told that I didn't know anything about Soul music and should be ignored by everyone. Day was told he had no taste because he didn't like Free Jazz. I mean guys have been told they had no legitimacy because they liked a certain artist or even a specific record label. It wasn't a matter of different tastes they were told, they were just plain wrong for liking something. You get the same attitude with politics here. It's just part of the curse and joy of Soulstrut.
What I think Dan was trying to say is that there are some very opinionated people on this board, that has nothing to do with their political or musical tastes for that matter. I mean personally, I was told that none of my reviews were legitimate at all because I didn't like Be Bop. Another time, because I'd given one album a bad review I was told that I didn't know anything about Soul music and should be ignored by everyone. Day was told he had no taste because he didn't like Free Jazz. I mean guys have been told they had no legitimacy because they liked a certain artist or even a specific record label. It wasn't a matter of different tastes they were told, they were just plain wrong for liking something. You get the same attitude with politics here. It's just part of the curse and joy of Soulstrut.
Oh, I understand & agree with you & Dan completely. That said, every situation you've cited still reeks of intolerance in some way. (not to mention the usual record nerd snobbery & some plain ol' assholishness - another reason I tend to avoid these discussions like the plague).
On this recent nonsense about neoconservative deception and such--I would only say that the terms of the UN cease fire and subsequent resolutions required Saddam to meet confidence building measures, which he did not.
The claims about Administration deception however, have NOTHING to do with whether Saddam complied with the UN cease fire imposed on him after the first Gulf War.
Here's a couple examples of where the Administration made claims about Iraq's WMD that were NOT supported by intellingence. They just made them because they wanted to make their case for war.
1) 9/13/02 someone in the Administration leaked a story to the New York Times that the Energy Department had agreed with the CIA that aluminium tubes Iraq tried to buy were for centrifuges for a nuclear weapons program. This was a total lie. The Energy Department had consistently said that the tubes were not for a nuclear program, but probably for rockets.
2) On 9/23/02 the Institute For Science and International Security made an analysis of the aluminum tubes and said that the intelligence on them was ambiguous and that there were dissenting opinions within the U.S. intelligence community about them, especially the Department of Energy who believed they were for rockets. The Institute said that analysts who did not agree with the administrations position that the tubes were for centrifuges were ignored. "ISIS has learned that U.S. nuclear experts who dissent from the Administration's position are expected to remain silent. The President has said what he has said, end of story, one knowledgeable expert said." Here's an example of the Administration ignoring experts that don't agree with their argument against Iraq.
3) On 1/28/03 in Bush's State Of The Union speech he made the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. This was a reference to the alleged sale of yellow cake uranium from Niger to Iraq. The CIA told the White House not to use it because it came from a disputed source. The White House got around this argument by claiming that English intelligence reported the claim (which happened to be the same fake claim the U.S. had!) By 3/11/03 the CIA had finally decided the story was based upon forged documents. In May, 2003 the President???s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board conducted an investigation into how the Niger claim was included in the State of the Union address. They found that the White House had been so desperate to find evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program that it ignored the warnings by the CIA about the Niger claim and included it in the speech anyway.
4) To the administration the Niger yellow cake uranium claim became a major part of their argument that Iraq could acquire a nuclear weapon sooner rather than later. Bush, Cheney and others made the claim that if Iraq could buy enriched uranium from abroad, not what Iraq was supposedly buying from Niger by the way, they could have a bomb within a year. Technically this was possible if Iraq???s nuclear program was as large and active as it had been before the Gulf War. While intelligence estimates said that Iraq had renewed its nuclear program, there was no evidence that it was as large as during the Gulf War when it was estimated that Iraq employed 7,000 scientists and engineers along with 20,000 workers. There were also no reports of Iraq trying to buy enriched uranium. This was a case of the administration exaggerating the threat Iraq posed to argue its case for war.
The Downing Street memo only says that America was preparing for a war, which would be the correct assumption based on Saddam's prior actions.
Already dealt with this but the documents said that the U.S. had decided upon war, not just that there were planning on it as a contingency.
And as for Chalabi, really? Does anyone think this one man was able to deceive the entire American intelligence community? Does anyone think the intelligence community did not endorse in the broadest terms that Saddam was concealing a weapons program?
Yes, the intelligence community mostly agreed that Iraq had renewed its WMD and nuclear program. However the intelligence Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress provided turned out to be false every single time. Not only that, but the neocons were able to deliver INC intelligence reports, unverified directly to the White House and Defense Department giving him a large influence over the Administration's views of Iraq's weapons programs and links with terrorism. That influence is seen by the fact that INC defectors' claims were directly used in major speeches by Administration officials.
Some examples:
1) One of the early Bush administration statements about Iraq's WMD came in March, 2001 when Richard Perle, head of the Pentagon???s Defense Policy Board, testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee saying that Iraq had WMD and nuclear programs, and that it was trying to hide them. In the Fall of 2001 the Iraqi National Congress (INC) provided a defector to the U.S. named Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri. Haideri said that Iraq secret underground nuclear facilities.
2) In October 2001, the Iraqi National Congress tried to cash in by providing two Iraqi defectors that claimed that the 9/11 hijackers were trained in Iraq. This has not been proven.
3) In Powell???s 2/5/03 U.N. speech he claimed in 2000 Iraq offered to give 2 Al Qaeda operatives WMD training, but didn't know if it was followed up. The claim was false. It was based upon an Iraqi National Congress defector interviewed by the Defense Intelligence Agency, who later changed his story when interviewed by the CIA. He told the CIA he had trained Saddam???s Fedayeen, not al Qaeda, and he never dealt with WMD.
4) When it came to Iraq, the neoconservatives held the worst-case beliefs. Not only did they believe many of the Iraqi defectors that turned out to be fakes, they set up their own alternative intelligence agency, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, which later became part of the Office of Special Plans, in the Pentagon that not only gave an alternate analysis of Iraq???s WMD, but raw, unchecked intelligence directly from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) to the White House and Pentagon leadership.
5) The 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on foreign WMD developments claimed Iraq???s WMD program had begun to grow based upon a single intelligence report that Iraq had mobile WMD labs. This single source, an Iraqi National Congress (INC) defector in German custody code named CURVEBALL, who would later turn out to be a hoax.
6) 7/30/02 Rumsfeld testified to Congress saying that air strikes alone would not be sufficient to rid Iraq of its WMD because it had mobile labs and facilities hidden underground. Both of these claims came from Iraqi National Congress defectors with questionable legitimacy.
7) 10/1/02 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq claimed that Iraq had up to 7 mobile labs, but it was mostly based on a single source provided by the INC, CURVEBALL. The Intelligence community had 4 additional sources supporting CURVEBALL. One of those 4 was an Iraqi National Congress (INC) defector who claimed that in 1996 he witnessed Iraqis trying to conceal biological weapons from U.N. inspectors. He never mentioned mobile labs however, just concealment. He was later deemed a "fabricator" by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency in 2002 before the publication of the NIE. Despite this, the source was still cited in the NIE.
8) The CIA went to great lengths to prove their case that Iraq had bought aluminum tubes for centrifuges for its nuclear program. In the Summer of 2002, Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz tried to influence the debate by meeting with Iraqi National Congress advisor Francis Brooke and former head of Iraq's nulcear program Khidir Hamza about the aluminum tubes. Hamza had never worked on centrifuges
but said that the tubes could be used for them. Wolfowitz circulated the results of the meeting throughout the administration.
Here's something else I just found on the Iraqi National Congress from my Iraq files:
In the Fall of 2001 the INC provided a defector to the U.S. named Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri. Haideri said that Iraq had secret labs to produce WMD. Haideri???s claim of secret labs was distorted into mobile labs by U.S. intelligence, who now claimed they had a second source to support CURVEBALL???s claim. In 2004 it was revealed that these INC defectors were part of an orchestrated campaign by the INC to convince the U.S. and Europe to go to war with Iraq. The INC provided multiple defectors to various Western governments all with similar stories.
Comments
My argument for the toppling of Saddam Hussein has been premised on liberal notions. For example, I have often invoked the case for the Kurds. I think that America cannot ignore its imperial legacy in mesopatamia and pretend we had nothing to do with Saddam's rise to power. We sold him grain credits after his campaign to depopulate his bread belt of Kurdish farmers. All of this is available by the way at the national security archives. On this recent nonsense about neoconservative deception and such--I would only say that the terms of the UN cease fire and subsequent resolutions required Saddam to meet confidence building measures, which he did not. The Downing Street memo only says that America was preparing for a war, which would be the correct assumption based on Saddam's prior actions. But regardless, you can all check the record yourselves, if you think that he had complied with his final opportunity. And as for Chalabi, really? Does anyone think this one man was able to deceive the entire American intelligence community? Does anyone think the intelligence community did not endorse in the broadest terms that Saddam was concealing a weapons program? And why are liberals all of the sudden rushing to the aid of the CIA? Have you have read the transcript from the Church Committee hearings?
On the big point about tolerance of so-called conservatives, I don't particularly mind most of it. But for the record, I don't read talking points. I don't swallow a particular line. My fillings are not hardwired to receive communiques from the RNC. Just as I think it's possible for most of you to reach your conclusions without the aid of apparats and partisan memoranda, it would be nice if some of my intellectual sparring partners could afford me the same courtesy. When people say I am just giving the Bush line, which I don't do, it's not much of an argument as an accusation of guilt by association. Reverse mccarthyism.
What a shocking revelation.
Like you Paul, I am attacked personally and obscenely for my political and musical views. I still love soulstrut and will continue spouting my views.
Dan
Dan
Sorry I guess I need to use quotation marks when referring to terrorism in order to be accepted by some of y'all folls. No thanks.
You are proving everyone's point in this thread man. Personally, I don't accept or not accept you, I just see you as being hawkish. That's not inherently a bad thing. Does that make you angry? Are you actually dovish on israel and I've just got it wrong?
Hey Bell.
Dan
Tyical right wing response to anyone who trys to say anything left of center on this site. You right wingers need to calm down and kick swearing at people. Have you ever heard of freedom of speech?
That was a joke, get it?
No Federalist?
yes you got it wrong.
From one of the Downing Street Memos 7/23/02
"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.[/b] The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.[/b] We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."
So there's a couple points here:
1) Publicly the administration said that they were NOT seeking a war by the Summer of 2002, but here the British are saying the decision has already been made. Vitamin, in your own arguments here on the Strut you said that the Bush administraiton was holding off until Iraq had finally failed the last round of U.N. inspections and then went to war. Here's the Brits, months and months before that saying that the U.S. had already decided on war and that they don't really car about the UN.
2) The U.S. was using intelligence to argue for war, not as a way to decide whether Iraq was a threat or not.
3) Yes, England agrees that Iraq had WMD, but it doesn't seem to be a threat as other countries are far more dangerous.
4) England wants to come up with a plan to use the UN weapons inspectors NOT to verify Iraq's compliance with disarming, but as a way to justify a war. I'm sure they shared this idea with the U.S.
No. You just set up an office in the Pentagon, not the CIA, where you can round up your own "intelligence".
FBI probes DOD office
"Two of the people interviewed are Bill Luti, former chief of OSP, and Harold Rhode of the Near East/South Asia office, according to participants in the investigation.
The NESA/OSP office was located on the fourth floor of the Pentagon, D ring, 7th corridor, according to Kwiatkowski, the former staffer.
According to one former senior U.S. intelligence official who maintained excellent contacts with serving U.S. intelligence officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, "Rhode practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalabi's office."
This same source quoted the intelligence official with the CPA as saying, "Rhode was observed by CIA operatives as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel," and that the information that the intelligence officials overheard him passing to Israel was "mind-boggling," this source said.
It dealt with U.S. plans, military deployments, political projects, discussion of Iraq assets, and a host of other sensitive topics, the former senior U.S. intelligence official said.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040824-102938-1916r.htm
I can believe this from the 2002 CIA Report:
"Although Saddam probably does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them."
"Without such material from abroad, Iraq probably would not be able to make a weapon until the last half of the decade."
and even,
"If Baghdad acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year."
But to then go here:
"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
-Condi Rice
And here,
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
-Dubya
after it was widely known throughout the "intelligence community" as well as the administration that,
"In fact, the Niger story, as documented by journalist Seymour Hersh (New Yorker, 3/31/03) and others, was based on crudely forged documents. In addition, the administration's own investigation in March 2002 concluded that the story was bogus. As one former State Department official put it, "This wasn't highly contested. There weren't strong advocates on the other side. It was done, shot down" (Time, 7/21/03)."
This house of cards came down a while ago.
Peace,
Cortez
Here's the Bush's argument:
After 9/11 the U.S. could not let a country like Iraq that had WMD and a Nuke program exist that might end up giving those weapons to terrorists. 2 part argument: 1) They have WMD/Nukes, 2) They have ties to terrorists.
WMD/Nukes
1) While the U.S. and other countries all thought that Iraq had some kind of WMD program, the U.S. is the ONLY country that said it was a threat. In the quoted Downing St. documents from England, they say that Iraq isn't much of a threat. Congress probably won't look at other intelligence agencies and countries however so this will get passed over.
2) The CIA had its head up its ass when it came to Iraq and WMD. Any little rumor they took as fact about the country. Yet, the Bush Administration took the worst case scenarios from the intelligence community and tended to exaggerate or only talk about those points. Case in point, the nuclear program, as Cortez just quoted the intelligence community said that Iraq had probably restarted its nuclear program (based on shady evidence but I won't go into that here), and said that perhaps if the country got enough material they could have a bomb within a couple years. The Bush administration took that and started saying that Iraq could have a bomb within a year and that the U.S. didn't want to see a "mushroom cloud" said by Rice, and others. That's exaggeration.
3) Here's where Congress though can find out right exaggeration and unsupported claims against Iraq, and that's about its links with terrorism. Bush claimed and implied that Iraq had ties with Al Qaeda. There, if Congress looks, they can find exaggeration and outright deception.
Here were the administration's claims:
A) Iraq was connected to the World Trade Center bombing
B) Atta, head of the 9/11 hijackers met with Iraq intelligence in Prague
C) Iraq gave weapons, bomb making and WMD training to Al Qaeda
D) Iraq and Al Qaeda met to cooperate
E) Iraq was therefore connected to 9/11
A) This was a claim made by Wolfowitz, and later taken up by Libby. They could not find any evidence behind it, yet continued to make the claim
B) Again, a claim made by Wolfowitz and taken up by Cheney all the way up to late 2004 I believe and I just heard a neocon on PBS News make talk about this 2 weeks ago. Wolfowitz's OWN investigation could find no evidence. Yet they still made it over and over. Cheney said that the intelligence agencies couldn't find any evidence that the meeting did NOT take place, therefore he could say it happened. What the fuck kind of argument is that? You can't find evidence that it did happen you dipshits!
C) This claim was based upon 1 Al Qaeda operative in custody who the DIA thought was lying all the way back in 2002. Yet the other intelligence agencies and the administration jumped upon it, and it ended up in Powell's speech to the U.N.
D) The 9/11 Commission found that Iraq and Al Qaeda met in the early 90s, but nothing came of it. The Bush administration claimed that these meetings went right up to 9/11 almost. Complete exaggeration.
E) Bush again and again implied that Iraq was behind 9/11. There is no evidence.
So, you can see that the administration took the worst case scenarios about WMD/Nukes and only talked about those points in public, and when it came to Iraq and Al Qaeda/Terrorism, they were full of shit.
They probably do.
co- worker in mocking "rapper guy" slang:
"Yo, yo why it be cool to talk shit bout some stuck up, pompus, $200,000 car drivin, blond haired, blue eyed, "I'm better than you" yuppie D Bag but the second that D Bag be black you have no problem w/ him & I'm a racist? Yo check that shit. You be the one brakin shit down 2 race.
I see. A stuck up flashy white actor on Fab Life is just an ass hole that you would say something like "needs a stiff sledge hammer to the face" about but a stuck up flashy black hip hop artist on Fab Life (jadakiss wearing a harley davidson tshirt and some big piece around his neck) is "representing a community" (i was referring to the modern hip hop community's overall aesthetic) (or what ever the hell you said).
What????
Yo, check that. Racist is a big word. Watch where you throw it.
Word."
me:
from someone who's frequently referred to asians as "chink chonks", praised and glorified the image of confederate flag wavin' rednecks and has vocalized other various racial epithets / slurs (if i could correctly recall,. shit you've said in the past i'd be herer all night writing this)....if you call asians chink chonks what do i think you say about other ethnicities....
you really expect me to think of you as anything less than a racist? come on.......
when you say the kind of shit you've said in the past... it sometimes offends me. i should've nipped this in the bud along time ago when it'd first come to my attention. but knowing you're such a cool mf'er.... it's hard to do... nobody want's to offend nobody? right? so i'll tell you again... please stop saying some of the shit you say. it offends me.
he never responded to me.
Paul,
What I think Dan was trying to say is that there are some very opinionated people on this board, that has nothing to do with their political or musical tastes for that matter. I mean personally, I was told that none of my reviews were legitimate at all because I didn't like Be Bop. Another time, because I'd given one album a bad review I was told that I didn't know anything about Soul music and should be ignored by everyone. Day was told he had no taste because he didn't like Free Jazz. I mean guys have been told they had no legitimacy because they liked a certain artist or even a specific record label. It wasn't a matter of different tastes they were told, they were just plain wrong for liking something. You get the same attitude with politics here. It's just part of the curse and joy of Soulstrut.
That's right! It all comes back to racism.
Oh, I understand & agree with you & Dan completely.
That said, every situation you've cited still reeks of intolerance in some way.
(not to mention the usual record nerd snobbery & some plain ol' assholishness - another reason I tend to avoid these discussions like the plague).
What was that "joy" part again?
The claims about Administration deception however, have NOTHING to do with whether Saddam complied with the UN cease fire imposed on him after the first Gulf War.
Here's a couple examples of where the Administration made claims about Iraq's WMD that were NOT supported by intellingence. They just made them because they wanted to make their case for war.
1) 9/13/02 someone in the Administration leaked a story to the New York Times that the Energy Department had agreed with the CIA that aluminium tubes Iraq tried to buy were for centrifuges for a nuclear weapons program. This was a total lie. The Energy Department had consistently said that the tubes were not for a nuclear program, but probably for rockets.
2) On 9/23/02 the Institute For Science and International Security made an analysis of the aluminum tubes and said that the intelligence on them was ambiguous and that there were dissenting opinions within the U.S. intelligence community about them, especially the Department of Energy who believed they were for rockets. The Institute said that analysts who did not agree with the administrations position that the tubes were for centrifuges were ignored. "ISIS has learned that U.S. nuclear experts who dissent from the Administration's position are expected to remain silent. The President has said what he has said, end of story, one knowledgeable expert said." Here's an example of the Administration ignoring experts that don't agree with their argument against Iraq.
3) On 1/28/03 in Bush's State Of The Union speech he made the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. This was a reference to the alleged sale of yellow cake uranium from Niger to Iraq. The CIA told the White House not to use it because it came from a disputed source. The White House got around this argument by claiming that English intelligence reported the claim (which happened to be the same fake claim the U.S. had!) By 3/11/03 the CIA had finally decided the story was based upon forged documents. In May, 2003 the President???s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board conducted an investigation into how the Niger claim was included in the State of the Union address. They found that the White House had been so desperate to find evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program that it ignored the warnings by the CIA about the Niger claim and included it in the speech anyway.
4) To the administration the Niger yellow cake uranium claim became a major part of their argument that Iraq could acquire a nuclear weapon sooner rather than later. Bush, Cheney and others made the claim that if Iraq could buy enriched uranium from abroad, not what Iraq was supposedly buying from Niger by the way, they could have a bomb within a year. Technically this was possible if Iraq???s nuclear program was as large and active as it had been before the Gulf War. While intelligence estimates said that Iraq had renewed its nuclear program, there was no evidence that it was as large as during the Gulf War when it was estimated that Iraq employed 7,000 scientists and engineers along with 20,000 workers. There were also no reports of Iraq trying to buy enriched uranium. This was a case of the administration exaggerating the threat Iraq posed to argue its case for war.
Already dealt with this but the documents said that the U.S. had decided upon war, not just that there were planning on it as a contingency.
Yes, the intelligence community mostly agreed that Iraq had renewed its WMD and nuclear program. However the intelligence Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress provided turned out to be false every single time. Not only that, but the neocons were able to deliver INC intelligence reports, unverified directly to the White House and Defense Department giving him a large influence over the Administration's views of Iraq's weapons programs and links with terrorism. That influence is seen by the fact that INC defectors' claims were directly used in major speeches by Administration officials.
Some examples:
1) One of the early Bush administration statements about Iraq's WMD came in March, 2001 when Richard Perle, head of the Pentagon???s Defense Policy Board, testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee saying that Iraq had WMD and nuclear programs, and that it was trying to hide them. In the Fall of 2001 the Iraqi National Congress (INC) provided a defector to the U.S. named Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri. Haideri said that Iraq secret underground nuclear facilities.
2) In October 2001, the Iraqi National Congress tried to cash in by providing two Iraqi defectors that claimed that the 9/11 hijackers were trained in Iraq. This has not been proven.
3) In Powell???s 2/5/03 U.N. speech he claimed in 2000 Iraq offered to give 2 Al Qaeda operatives WMD training, but didn't know if it was followed up. The claim was false. It was based upon an Iraqi National Congress defector interviewed by the Defense Intelligence Agency, who later changed his story when interviewed by the CIA. He told the CIA he had trained Saddam???s Fedayeen, not al Qaeda, and he never dealt with WMD.
4) When it came to Iraq, the neoconservatives held the worst-case beliefs. Not only did they believe many of the Iraqi defectors that turned out to be fakes, they set up their own alternative intelligence agency, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, which later became part of the Office of Special Plans, in the Pentagon that not only gave an alternate analysis of Iraq???s WMD, but raw, unchecked intelligence directly from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) to the White House and Pentagon leadership.
5) The 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on foreign WMD developments claimed Iraq???s WMD program had begun to grow based upon a single intelligence report that Iraq had mobile WMD labs. This single source, an Iraqi National Congress (INC) defector in German custody code named CURVEBALL, who would later turn out to be a hoax.
6) 7/30/02 Rumsfeld testified to Congress saying that air strikes alone would not be sufficient to rid Iraq of its WMD because it had mobile labs and facilities hidden underground. Both of these claims came from Iraqi National Congress defectors with questionable legitimacy.
7) 10/1/02 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq claimed that Iraq had up to 7 mobile labs, but it was mostly based on a single source provided by the INC, CURVEBALL. The Intelligence community had 4 additional sources supporting CURVEBALL. One of those 4 was an Iraqi National Congress (INC) defector who claimed that in 1996 he witnessed Iraqis trying to conceal biological weapons from U.N. inspectors. He never mentioned mobile labs however, just concealment. He was later deemed a "fabricator" by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency in 2002 before the publication of the NIE. Despite this, the source was still cited in the NIE.
8) The CIA went to great lengths to prove their case that Iraq had bought aluminum tubes for centrifuges for its nuclear program. In the Summer of 2002, Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz tried to influence the debate by meeting with Iraqi National Congress advisor Francis Brooke and former head of Iraq's nulcear program Khidir Hamza about the aluminum tubes. Hamza had never worked on centrifuges but said that the tubes could be used for them. Wolfowitz circulated the results of the meeting throughout the administration.
In the Fall of 2001 the INC provided a defector to the U.S. named Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri. Haideri said that Iraq had secret labs to produce WMD. Haideri???s claim of secret labs was distorted into mobile labs by U.S. intelligence, who now claimed they had a second source to support CURVEBALL???s claim. In 2004 it was revealed that these INC defectors were part of an orchestrated campaign by the INC to convince the U.S. and Europe to go to war with Iraq. The INC provided multiple defectors to various Western governments all with similar stories.