Asterisks Dot White House's Iraq Argument

[FORD]

Asterisks Dot White House's Iraq Argument

By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 12, 2005; A01

President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.

Neither assertion is wholly accurate.

The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence agencies overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and very few members of Congress from either party were skeptical about this belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top lawmakers in both parties were emphatic and certain in their public statements.

But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, briefing reporters Thursday, countered "the notion that somehow this administration manipulated the intelligence." He said that "those people who have looked at that issue, some committees on the Hill in Congress, and also the Silberman-Robb Commission, have concluded it did not happen."

But the only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions. And Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said in releasing his report on March 31, 2005: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

Bush, in Pennsylvania yesterday, was more precise, but he still implied that it had been proved that the administration did not manipulate intelligence, saying that those who suggest the administration "manipulated the intelligence" are "fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments."

In the same speech, Bush asserted that "more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power." Giving a preview of Bush's speech, Hadley had said that "we all looked at the same intelligence."

But Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers. Also, the National Intelligence Estimate summarizing the intelligence community's views about the threat from Iraq was given to Congress just days before the vote to authorize the use of force in that country.

In addition, there were doubts within the intelligence community not included in the NIE. And even the doubts expressed in the NIE could not be used publicly by members of Congress because the classified information had not been cleared for release. For example, the NIE view that Hussein would not use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or turn them over to terrorists unless backed into a corner was cleared for public use only a day before the Senate vote.

The lawmakers are partly to blame for their ignorance. Congress was entitled to view the 92-page National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq before the October 2002 vote. But, as The Washington Post reported last year, no more than six senators and a handful of House members read beyond the five-page executive summary.

Even within the Bush administration, not everybody consistently viewed Iraq as what Hadley called "an enormous threat." In a news conference in February 2001 in Egypt, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said of the economic sanctions against Hussein's Iraq: "Frankly, they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction."

Bush, in his speech Friday, said that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." But in trying to set the record straight, he asserted: "When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support."

The October 2002 joint resolution authorized the use of force in Iraq, but it did not directly mention the removal of Hussein from power.

The resolution voiced support for diplomatic efforts to enforce "all relevant Security Council resolutions," and for using the armed forces to enforce the resolutions and defend "against the continuing threat posed by Iraq."

Hadley, in his remarks, went further. "Congress, in 1998, authorized, in fact, the use of force based on that intelligence," he said. "And, as you know, the Clinton administration took some action."

But the 1998 legislation gave the president authority "to support efforts to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein" by providing assistance to Iraqi opposition groups, including arms, humanitarian aid and broadcasting facilities.

President Bill Clinton ordered four days of bombing of Iraqi weapons facilities in 1998, under the 1991 resolution authorizing military force in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Describing that event in an interview with CBS News yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: "We went to war in 1998 because of concerns about his weapons of mass destruction."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[Hardrock69]

This does not surprise me.

That fucking Chimp bastard and his dicklickers are doing anything they can to weasel their fucking way out of this mess, and as I predicted in the other thread, they are just going to dig themselves a hole so deep they will never be able to get out.

Chimpeachment is on the horizon.

He lied AGAIN.

I just hope Cheney gets indicted as well, as I do not want that goddamnable cocksucker as President.

[FORD]

Originally posted by Hardrock69


Chimpeachment is on the horizon.



A few of the oldtimers over at Democratic Underground were referring to this pathetic excuse of a speech as Chimpy's "I am not a crook!" moment. Or in other words, comparing it to the moment Nixon knew he was fucked.

Let's hope they're right. ;)

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by FORD
A few of the oldtimers over at Democratic Underground were referring to this pathetic excuse of a speech as Chimpy's "I am not a crook!" moment. Or in other words, comparing it to the moment Nixon knew he was fucked.

Let's hope they're right. ;)

The historical parallels are fascinating...

[DrMaddVibe]

What were those "lies" again?

[FORD]

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-11/491051/goering.jpg

[DrMaddVibe]

I guess its easier for you to post Nazis apologetics than to actually post the lies.

I don't really blame you. What with all of the "theories" rattling around in your pathetic twisted small mind its no wonder that you find it hard to comply.

[Warham]

I'm still wondering how he's going to be impeached if the Republicans control Congress.

One of you libs care to explain?

[FORD]

Originally posted by Warham
I'm still wondering how he's going to be impeached if the Republicans control Congress.

One of you libs care to explain?

Republicans started the impeachment proceedings against Nixon, when he became too much of a liability to their party.

Chimp is already a far worse liability than Tricky Dick ever was, but there is so much corruption in the Republican leadership (DeLay, Frist, etc) that what few honest Republicans are left go unheard. Ron Paul of Texas comes to mind. He's a right wing libertarian, far cry from a Democrat, but he's been very outspoken against the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He'd be a very likely candidate to get the ball rolling on Chimpeachment.

And if he doesn't, then there's always January 2007 :)

[FORD]

Here's what conservative Paul Craig Roberts (Reagan administration cabinet official) has to say about Chimpeachment.......

September 03, 2005
Impeach Bush Now

By Paul Craig Roberts

The raison d’etre of the Bush administration is war in the Middle East in order to protect America from terrorism and to insure America’s oil supply. On both counts the Bush administration has failed catastrophically.

Bush’s single-minded focus on the "war against terrorism" has compounded a natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in American history. The US has lost its largest and most strategic port, thousands of lives, and 80% of one of America’s most historic cities is under water.

If terrorists had achieved this result, it would rank as the greatest terrorist success in history.

Prior to 911, the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) in order to protect the strategic port, the refineries, and the large population.

However, after 2003 the flow of funds to SELA were diverted to the war in Iraq. During 2004 and 2005 the New Orleans Times-Picayune published nine articles citing New Orleans’ loss of hurricane protection to the war in Iraq.

Every expert and newspapers as distant as Texas saw the New Orleans catastrophe coming. But President Bush and his insane government preferred war in Iraq to protecting Americans at home.

Bush’s war left the Corps of Engineers only 20% of the funding to protect New Orleans from flooding from Lake Pontchartrain. On June 18, 2004, the Corps’ project manager, Al Naomi, told the Times-Picayune: "the levees are sinking. ….If we don’t get the money to raise them, we can’t stay ahead of the settlement."

Despite the dire warnings delivered by the 2004 hurricane season, the Bush administration made deep budget cuts for flood control and hurricane funding for New Orleans. The US Senate, alarmed at the Bush administration’s insanity, was planning to restore the funding for 2006. But now it is too late. Many multiples of the funding that would have saved the city now have to be spent to rescue it.

Not content with leaving New Orleans unprotected, it took the Bush administration five days to get the remnants of the National Guard not serving in Iraq, along with desperately needed food and water, to devastated New Orleans. This is the slowest emergency response by the US government in modern times. By the time the Bush administration could organize any resources for New Orleans, many more people had died and the city was in total chaos.

Despite the most dismal performance on record, Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, said on Thursday that the Bush administration has done a "magnificent job."

The on-the-scene mayor of New Orleans sees it differently: "They’re feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying."

"They’re thinking small man, and this is a major, major deal."

It is a major deal, one that will affect Americans far beyond New Orleans. According to reports, 25% of our oil and gasoline comes through the New Orleans port and refineries, all out of commission. Needed goods cannot be imported, and exports will plummet, worsening an already disastrous deficit in the balance of trade.

The increased cost of gasoline will soak up consumers’ disposable incomes, with dire effects on consumer spending. US economic growth will be siphoned off into higher energy costs. American lives far from New Orleans will be adversely affected.

The destruction of New Orleans is the responsibility of the most incompetent government in American history and perhaps in all history. Americans are rapidly learning that they were deceived by the superpower hubris. The powerful US military cannot successfully occupy Baghdad or control the road to the airport--and this against an insurgency based in only 20% of the Iraqi population. Bush’s pointless war has left Washington so pressed for money that the federal government abandoned New Orleans to catastrophe.

The Bush administration is damned by its gross incompetence. Bush has squandered the lives and health of thousands of people. He has run through hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. He has lost America’s reputation and its allies. With barbaric torture and destruction of our civil liberty, he has stripped America of its inherent goodness and morality. And now Bush has lost America’s largest port and 25 percent of its oil supply. Why? Because Bush started a gratuitous war egged on by a claque of crazy neoconservatives who have sacrificed America’s interests to their insane agenda.

The neoconservatives have brought these disasters to all Americans, Democrat and Republican alike. Now they must he held accountable. Bush and his neoconservatives are guilty of criminal negligence and must be prosecuted.

What will it take for Americans to reestablish accountability in their government? Bush has got away with lies and an illegal war of aggression, with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture centers, and now with the destruction of New Orleans.

What disaster will next spring from Bush’s incompetence?

Dr. Roberts, a former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former Contributing Editor of National Review, was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan administration. He is the author of The Supply-Side Revolution and, with Lawrence M. Stratton, of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

link (http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050903_impeach.htm)

[Warham]

If Bush is impeached, then Cheney becomes president. What's that going to do for you libs? You think he's already running the show anyway.

And how would Republicans have started impeachment procedings against Nixon? The Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate back in '73.

[DrMaddVibe]

Wait for it....

They have some diabolical plan to hatch to unseat Cheney too!

BAWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!

[FORD]

I'd say the odds of Cheney making it until 2008 are roughly about the same as the possibility of me voting for Hillary Clinton.

We know Fitzgerald is still on his ass for Treasongate. Scooter could always turn on him, and in either case, the stress of being held accountable for his crimes could either drive Uncle Dick to have "the Big One" or to "retire" for "Health Reasons". And this thing is lining up with Nixon's fall so well, that the departure of "Agnew" is almost a given.

[DrMaddVibe]

Where's the "lies" ford?

Stay with us.

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by FORD
I'd say the odds of Cheney making it until 2008 are roughly about the same as the possibility of me voting for Hillary Clinton.



Which puts Condi Rice or some other hot shot into the VP and then into the Oval Office if your little tin foil beanie plan hatches.

That's all you want...a well-liked incumbent for 2008 to run against Hillary. :)

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
Where's the "lies" ford?

Stay with us.

:)Ask and yee shall receive so sayeth the lord...

Looking back: "Curveball" and the WMD Lie Factory

"We have teams of people that are out looking. They've investigated a number of sites. And within the last week or two, they have in fact captured and have in custody two of the mobile trailers that Secretary Powell talked about at the United Nations as being biological weapons laboratories."

Donald Rumsfeld
Infinity Radio Interview
May 31, 2003


"Is it an embarrassment to people on the other side that we’ve discovered these biological production vans, which the defector told us about?"

Paul Wolfowitz
CNN Interview
May 31, 2003



Now that the Bush's commission has released it's "scathing report," finding that intelligence from "America's spy agencies" was "dead wrong," it's time to take a look back at the character emerging as the favored scapegoat, the infamous "Curveball."

According to Adam Entous reporting for Reuters, Curveball was "...the 'pivotal' source behind the intelligence community's escalating warnings about Iraq's biological weapons programs before the invasion."

Assertions that Iraq was cooking up biological agents in mobile labs to elude international inspectors and Western intelligence services -- based almost exclusively on Curveball's information -- became what the report called one of the "most important and alarming" assessments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate cited by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in justifying the war.

Who is this amazing Curveball, who was able almost singlehandedly to make the Bush Administration believe that Saddam Hussein had mobile chemical weapons factories? As was reported a year ago

Curveball is the brother of a top aide of Ahmad Chalabi, the pro-western Iraqi former exile with links to the Pentagon.

A whole family of "Heroes in Error!"

Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, darling (even now) of the War Party, and opportunistic peddler of whatever lies his sponsors needed to sell the invasion of Iraq. Shouldn't we peer back through the fog of time and reconstruct just how the Bushies came to put forward such Heroes in Error? Maybe we should look all the way back to the Office of Special Plans, that stovepiping secret intelligence group that operated through VP Cheney's office:

...what the Bush people did was “dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them.

“They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information,” Pollack continued. “They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn’t have the time or the energy to go after the bad information.”

The Administration eventually got its way, a former C.I.A. official said. “The analysts at the C.I.A. were beaten down defending their assessments. And they blame George Tenet”—the C.I.A. director—“for not protecting them. I’ve never seen a government like this.”
[...]
The defectors, however, had an audience prepared to believe the worst. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had long complained about the limits of American intelligence. In the late nineteen-nineties, for example, he had chaired a commission on ballistic-missile programs that criticized the unwillingness of intelligence analysts “to make estimates that extended beyond the hard evidence they had in hand.” After he became Secretary of Defense, a separate intelligence unit was set up in the Pentagon’s policy office, under the control of William Luti, a senior aide to Feith. This office, which circumvented the usual procedures of vetting and transparency, stovepiped many of its findings to the highest-ranking officials.
[...]
Chalabi’s defector reports were now flowing from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-President’s office, and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals. When INR analysts did get a look at the reports, they were troubled by what they found. “They’d pick apart a report and find out that the source had been wrong before, or had no access to the information provided,” Greg Thielmann told me. “There was considerable skepticism throughout the intelligence community about the reliability of Chalabi’s sources, but the defector reports were coming all the time. Knock one down and another comes along. Meanwhile, the garbage was being shoved straight to the President.”

A routine settled in: the Pentagon’s defector reports, classified “secret,” would be funnelled to newspapers, but subsequent C.I.A. and INR analyses of the reports—invariably scathing but also classified—would remain secret.

“It became a personality issue,” a Pentagon consultant said of the Bush Administration’s handling of intelligence. “My fact is better than your fact. The whole thing is a failure of process. Nobody goes to primary sources.” The intelligence community was in full retreat.

In the spring of 2002, the former White House official told me, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz began urging the President to release more than ninety million dollars in federal funds to Chalabi. The 1998 Iraq Liberation Act had authorized ninety-seven million dollars for the Iraqi opposition, but most of the funds had not been expended. The State Department opposed releasing the rest of the money, arguing that Chalabi had failed to account properly for the funds he had already received. “The Vice-President came into a meeting furious that we hadn’t given the money to Chalabi,” the former official recalled. Cheney said, “Here we are, denying him money, when they”—the Iraqi National Congress—“are providing us with unique intelligence on Iraqi W.M.D.s.”


It was "unique intelligence" all right. As Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest write in their dissection of the OSP, "The Lie Factory,"

According to multiple sources, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress sent a steady stream of misleading and often faked intelligence reports into U.S. intelligence channels. That information would flow sometimes into NESA/OSP directly, sometimes through Defense Intelligence Agency debriefings of Iraqi defectors via the Defense Human Intelligence Service, and sometimes through the INC's own U.S.-funded Intelligence Collection Program, which was overseen by the Pentagon. The INC's intelligence "isn't reliable at all," according to Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counterterrorism. "Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, [creating] cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice presidential speeches."

When we see statements like this: "... the Bush administration relied on bogus intelligence from a mysterious Iraqi chemical engineer code-named 'Curveball'," let's remember how that "intelligence" was created, lest we be mislead by propagandistic lines like this,

.....the presidential commission that investigated intelligence failures in Iraq cast Curveball as the "pivotal" source behind the intelligence community's escalating warnings about Iraq's biological weapons programs before the invasion.

The "intelligence community" which used Curveball "intelligence" certainly wasn't part of this community:

An Iraqi defector nicknamed Curveball who wrongly claimed that Saddam Hussein had mobile chemical weapons factories was last night at the centre of a bitter row between the CIA and Germany's intelligence agency.

German officials said that they had warned American colleagues well before the Iraq war that Curveball's information was not credible - but the warning was ignored.

It was the Iraqi defector's testimony that led the Bush administration to claim that Saddam had built a fleet of trucks and railway wagons to produce anthrax and other deadly germs.

In his presentation to the UN security council in February last year, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, explicitly used Curveball's now discredited claims as justification for war. The Iraqis were assembling "mobile production facilities for biological agents", Mr Powell said, adding that his information came from "a solid source".

These "killer caravans" allowed Saddam to produce anthrax "on demand", it was claimed. US officials never had direct access to the defector, and have subsequently claimed that the Germans misled them.

Yesterday, however, German agents told Die Zeit newspaper that they had warned the Bush administration long before last year that there were "problems" with Curveball's account. "We gave a clear credibility assessment. On our side at least, there were no tricks before Colin Powell's presentation," one source told the newspaper.

Who "misled" the "intelligence community?" As Justin Raimondo points out in today's column, "The system did not just break down all by itself: somebody sabotaged it, and that is pretty clearly the "analysts" who fed on the lies concocted by Chalabi & Co. "


Thanks to billmon for the quotes.

ADDED BY POPULAR REQUEST:

"We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them."

George W. Bush
Interview, TVP Poland
May 29, 2003

Link (http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=P1971_0_1_0_C)

[Nickdfresh]

Former aide: Powell WMD speech 'lowest point in my life'

Tuesday, August 23, 2005; Posted: 10:44 a.m. EDT (14:44 GMT)

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/WORLD/meast/08/19/powell.un/vert.powell.20030205.jpg
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell presents the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction

(CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/19/powell.un/)) -- A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state's presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "the lowest point" in his life.

"I wish I had not been involved in it," says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005. "I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life."

Wilkerson is one of several insiders interviewed for the CNN Presents documentary "Dead Wrong -- Inside an Intelligence Meltdown." The program pieced together the events leading up to the mistaken WMD intelligence that was presented to the public. A presidential commission that investigated the pre-war WMD intelligence found much of it to be "dead wrong."

Powell's speech, delivered on February 5, 2003, made the case for the war by presenting U.S. intelligence that purported to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Wilkerson says the information in Powell's presentation initially came from a document he described as "sort of a Chinese menu" that was provided by the White House.

"(Powell) came through the door ... and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers, and he said, 'This is what I've got to present at the United Nations according to the White House, and you need to look at it,'" Wilkerson says in the program. "It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose."

Wilkerson and Powell spent four days and nights in a CIA conference room with then-Director George Tenet and other top officials trying to ensure the accuracy of the presentation, Wilkerson says.

"There was no way the Secretary of State was going to read off a script about serious matters of intelligence that could lead to war when the script was basically un-sourced," Wilkerson says.

In one dramatic accusation in his speech, Powell showed slides alleging that Saddam had bioweapons labs mounted on trucks that would be almost impossible to find.

"In fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator," says David Kay, who served as the CIA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. That source, an Iraqi defector who had never been debriefed by the CIA, was known within the intelligence community as "Curveball."

See, they even lied to their own people to be better salesmen for PNAC disasters.:)

After searching Iraq for several months across the summer of 2003, Kay began e-mailing Tenet to tell him the WMD evidence was falling apart. At one point, Wilkerson says, Tenet called Powell to tell him the claims about mobile bioweapons labs were apparently not true.

"George actually did call the Secretary, and said, 'I'm really sorry to have to tell you. We don't believe there were any mobile labs for making biological weapons,'" Wilkerson says in the documentary. "This was the third or fourth telephone call. And I think it's fair to say the Secretary and Mr. Tenet, at that point, ceased being close. I mean, you can be sincere and you can be honest and you can believe what you're telling the Secretary. But three or four times on substantive issues like that? It's difficult to maintain any warm feelings."

[Satan]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
Which puts Condi Rice or some other hot shot into the VP and then into the Oval Office if your little tin foil beanie plan hatches.

That's all you want...a well-liked incumbent for 2008 to run against Hillary. :)

Nope. You get Chimp & Cheney at the same time. Then the Speaker of the House becomes President.

By this time, the Speaker will be a Demoncrat.

How does President Kucinich sound? ;)

[Warham]

No, the Speaker is Dennis Hastert, a Republican.

[Satan]

Originally posted by Warham
No, the Speaker is Dennis Hastert, a Republican.

Not after next year, he won't be.

[LoungeMachine]

Top 30 Bush - Iraq Lies: A Reference For Seekers of Truth

So many lies have been spread by the Administration and their minions that it is hard to keep track. I suppose that’s part of their strategy. Overwhelm the opposition and the public with so much misinformation that the truth will never be clear. They can then press forward in an ambiguous cloud of fear and “what if?” scenarios. Thus, we should take pains to document the trail of deceit. As our part, we have created this list, sort of a handy tip-sheet to refute the arguments of the tin-pot, would-be murderers who insist on seizing Iraqi oil in exchange for the blood of our military men and women and the Iraqi citizenry..

So here we go.

1) It is only appropriate that we start the list with the most recent fabrication:

“A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said [March 6] in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.”

“Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed "not authentic" after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council.”

And the Administration’s response?

"’We fell for it,’ said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents."

Yeah right! As though the Administration had absolutely nothing to do with this "mysterious" fabrication.

Anyway, in no particular order, here are the other top lies currently being circulated by the Administration and the right-wing propaganda machine.

2) The Bush Administration insists Iraq is developing an 800-mile-plus range missile. A prior UN resolution made it illegal for Iraq to build missiles that had a range in excess of 93 miles.

In fact, The al-Samoud 2, the missile to which the administration refers, has indeed been flying too far in tests… …by about 15 miles and that is because it isn't yet loaded down with its guidance system.

3) The administration claimed they had satellite photographs that showed new research buildings at Iraqi nuclear sites. However, when the U.N. went into the new buildings they found "nothing".

4) The administration asserted that specific presidential palaces were places the inspectors would find incriminating evidence. Again, they found "nothing".

5) It was reported that an al Qaeda informant claimed that terrorists had found a way of smuggling radioactive material through airports without being detected.

Unfortunately, the “informant” then failed a polygraph test.

"'This piece of that puzzle turns out to be fabricated and therefore the reason for a lot of the alarm, particularly in Washington this week, has been dissipated after they found out that this information was not true,' Vince Cannistraro, former CIA counter-terrorism chief, told the news network."

Even so, the “Orange” alert status, which was activated when the Administration made these claims public, remained. But wait, if the reason for the heightened alert status was proven false, then why keep it? Good Question. Let’s see…if I were Bush and I wanted to paralyze the populace with fear in order to force them behind me in all my criminal dealings, I would certainly take advantage of this miscue by allowing the alert to remain. Nothing like a little orange to make people see red. Besides, how many people could have possibly even heard about the whole “Hoax” thing?

True to form, Tom Ridge made no mention of the “Hoax” to anyone so why should Bush.

"We have not received any additional intelligence that would lead us to either raise or lower the threat level at this time."

6) Rupert Murdoch helped the Administration by spreading this lie (as though Fox News and the NY Post wasn't enough):

"Saddam Hussein's senior bodyguard has fled with details of Iraq's secret arsenal. His revelations have supported US President George W. Bush's claim [that] there is enough evidence from UN inspectors to justify going to war. [The bodyguard] has provided Israeli intelligence with a list of sites that the inspectors have not visited."

They include:

~ An underground chemical weapons facility at the southern end of the Jadray Peninsula in Baghdad.

~ A SCUD assembly area near Ramadi. The missiles come from North Korea.

~ Two underground bunkers in Iraq's Western Desert. These contain biological weapons.

And…

"William Tierney, a former UN weapons inspector who has continued to gather information on Saddam's arsenal, said Mahmoud's information is 'the smoking gun'."

Needless to say, all of these have proven to be 100% false.

7) As a centerpiece to it's argument for invading Iraq, the Administration has boldly pursued the idea that Saddam and al Qaeda are in cahoots. The CIA and the FBI disagree:

"…analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have complained that senior administration officials have exaggerated the significance of some intelligence reports about Iraq, particularly about its possible links to terrorism, in order to strengthen their political argument for war, government officials said."

and…

"At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network. "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there," a government official said."

This is consistent with what they were saying back in October:

"They are politicizing intelligence, no question about it," said Vincent M. Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. "And they are undertaking a campaign to get George Tenet [the director of central intelligence] fired because they can't get him to say what they want on Iraq."

In addition, in a January 30, interview, Blix revealed that:

“ …he had seen no persuasive indications of Iraqi ties to al Qaeda, which Mr. Bush also mentioned in his speech.”

Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice alleged that al-Qaeda operatives have had a direct relationship with the Iraqi government:

"There clearly are contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented,"

She did not document them and a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated the evidence for linkage is tenuous, based on sources of varying reliability.

8) Central to the Saddam - al Qaeda connection claim is the assertion that Czech authorities had evidence of a meeting between one of the September 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague in April 2001.

Both Czech President Vaclav Havel and Czech intelligence refuted this report. To this day, members of the Administration cite the Prague report as evidence of an Iraq - al Qaeda connection.

9) The Administration latched onto the idea that Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, escaped from New York on a false passport provided by Iraqi intelligence. The reasoning for this speculation is so far-fetched as to be laughable.

10) Bush and Co. claimed that al-Qaeda refugees from the war in Afghanistan have found refuge in Iraq. Some of this relates to a group called Ansar al, which has taken over a small area near the Iranian border. This part of Iraq, however, is in Kurdish hands and outside the direct control of the Iraqi Government.

11) Rafed Ibrahim Fatah, an Ansar member now in Kurdish hands spoke of meetings between [Ansar] and al-Qaeda leaders, though not Osama Bin Laden himself. Although the implication was that the Iraqi's did indeed have ties to Iraq, as explained above, this in no way implicated the Iraqi government.

12) Rafed Fatah and a senior al-Qaeda operative captured in Morocco, Abu Zubair, supposedly underwent training in Iraq. This "evidence" was touted to be a feature in the British Government's dossier against Iraq. In fact, They were not mentioned in the report. Nor was any alleged link between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

13) Blix touted a discrepancy in reported Chemical weapons as potential proof that Iraq has 1000 tons of chemical weapons stashed away. He reported that a document given to UN inspectors by the Iraqis:

“...gives an account of the expenditure of bombs, including chemical bombs by Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War... The document indicates that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi air force between 1983 and 1998; while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1000 tons.”

The implication was clear: There are probably 1000 tons of chemical agent hidden from us, waiting to be used.

But Scott Ritter, former top UN weapons inspector, points out that the viable existence of these agents is impossible:

“Through its inspection activities, UNSCOM [the precursor to the current weapons inspection body UNIMOVIC] obtained reasonable information concerning Iraq's chemical weapons (CW) activities from 1981 to 1987, with the exception of data on the use of CW against Iran. Iraq consistently refused to provide details to UNSCOM regarding such use, probably because of the political fallout that such an admission would cause.”

and…

“While this refusal prevented a full accounting of Iraqi CW, Iraq could not still have viable CW from that period because the chemical agent would have long since deteriorated... As an internal UNSCOM working paper noted, an Iraqi declaration of CW use during the war with Iran was not required for any meaningful verification: `Taking into consideration the conditions and the quality of CW-agents and munitions produced by Iraq at that time, there is no possibility of weapons remaining from the mid-1980s'.”

and…

“What was overlooked in 1998 [when UNSCOM inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq] was the extent to which UNSCOM had actually eliminated Iraq's CW capability. The Muthanna State Establishment and most of Iraq's associated production equipment had been destroyed, either through aerial bombardment during Operation Desert Storm [the US military's operational designation for the 1991 Gulf War] or under the supervision of UNSCOM inspectors. Iraq's stockpiles of CW agent had either been destroyed in the same manner or could be assumed to have deteriorated.”

Blix made no mention of this in either his December 19, 2002 or January 27, 2003 report.

14) Bush, in his speech to the U.N. Security Council on Sept. 12, said Iraq had made "several attempts to buy-high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, Bush said Iraq had "attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

By early January, the IAEA had reached a preliminary conclusion:

"The 81mm tubes sought by Iraq were 'not directly suitable' for centrifuges, but appeared intended for use as conventional artillery rockets, as Iraq had claimed. The Bush administration, meanwhile, stuck to its original position while acknowledging disagreement among U.S. officials who had reviewed the evidence."

Last month, Powell likewise dismissed the IAEA's conclusions, telling U.N. leaders that Iraq would not have ordered tubes at such high prices and with such exacting performance ratings if intended for use as ordinary rockets. Powell specifically noted that Iraq had sought tubes that had been "anodized," or coated with a thin outer film -- a procedure that Powell said was required if the tubes were to be used in centrifuges.

"A number of independent experts on uranium enrichment have sided with IAEA's conclusion that the tubes were at best ill suited for centrifuges. Several have said that the "anodized" features mentioned by Powell are actually a strong argument for use in rockets, not centrifuges, contrary to the administration's statement."

"[An IAEA] report yesterday all but ruled out the use of the tubes in a nuclear program. The IAEA chief said investigators had unearthed extensive records that backed up Iraq's explanation. The documents, which included blueprints, invoices and notes from meetings, detailed a 14-year struggle by Iraq to make 81mm conventional rockets that would perform well and resist corrosion. Successive failures led Iraqi officials to revise their standards and request increasingly higher and more expensive metals."

15) Last September, the United States and Britain issued reports accusing Iraq of renewing its quest for nuclear weapons. In Britain's assessment, Iraq reportedly had "sought significant amounts of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear program that could require it."

The IAEA reported finding no evidence of banned weapons or nuclear material in an extensive sweep of Iraq using advanced radiation detectors.

16) In a January 30 interview, Blix:

“...took issue with what he said were US Secretary of State Colin Powell's claims that the inspectors had found that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent their discovery. He said that the inspectors had reported no such incidents."

17) In that same interview, Blix said:

" …he had not seen convincing evidence that Iraq was sending weapons scientists to Syria, Jordan or any other country to prevent them from being interviewed. Nor had he any reason to believe, as President Bush charged in his State of the Union speech, that Iraqi agents were posing as scientists..."

18) Bush cited a satellite photograph and a report by the U.N. atomic energy agency as evidence of Iraq's impending [nuclear] rearmament. But in response to a report by NBC News, a senior administration official acknowledged that the U.N. report drew no such conclusion, and a spokesman for the U.N. agency said "the photograph had been misinterpreted".

19) [Bush] has consistently lied about Iraq's nuclear capabilities as well as its missile-delivery capabilities...Bush tried to frighten Americans by claiming that Iraq possesses a fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used 'for missions targeting the US'. "[This statement is] false"

20) "Bush's case against Saddam Hussein, outlined in a televised address to the nation, relied on a slanted and sometimes entirely false reading of the available US intelligence, government officials and analysts claimed. Officials in the CIA, FBI and energy department are being put under intense pressure to produce reports that back the administration's line…

"Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," said Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-intelligence."

21) Publicly, President Bush's officials are touting reports that al-Qaeda operatives have found refuge in Baghdad and that Iraq once helped them develop chemical weapons. Privately, government intelligence sources are hedging on that subject, suggesting there might be "less than meets the eye".

22) Contrary to the assertion by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Iraq kicked out U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998, Charles Duelfer, who was deputy chairman of the U.N. inspection agency at the time asserts, "We made the decision to evacuate."

23) Vice President Dick Cheney alleged that Iraq will have nuclear weapons "fairly soon." In reality, no one outside Iraq really knows how close Baghdad is to that point.

24) Bush warned the United Nations that Saddam could have nuclear weapons within a year of acquiring fissionable material. Cheney said:

"On the nuclear question, many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire such weapons fairly soon."

The CIA's own forecasts do not support these assertions.

25) The administration characterizes Saddam as a supporter of terrorism generally. "Iraq's ties to terrorist networks are long-standing," Rumsfeld told Congress. Those ties are complex. In fact, one group the U.S. government brands as a terrorist outfit has been favored not only by Iraq but by many members of the U.S. Congress. That group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, advocates the violent overthrow of the religious government of Iran. It recently held a news conference two blocks from the White House.

26) The administration alleges al-Qaeda operatives, including senior figures, have been in Iraq. But AP reporter, Calvin Woodward notes that U.S. intelligence sources have said al-Qaeda members are believed to be simply moving through Iraq en route to their home countries. They have not offered evidence these sojourners are putting down roots in Iraq, setting up camps or making contact with Saddam's government.

27) The administration, as evidence of Saddam's venality, has repeatedly noted he used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s -- an event that barely elicited a response from Washington at the time. And one that, although known to US authorities, failed to shake US support for Iraq at the time. The lie in this instance would be the feigned Administration outrage toward the use of chemical weapons.

28) Regarding the alleged Iraqi-ordered assassination attempt on George H. W. Bush: "A senior White House official recently told me that one of the seemingly most persuasive elements of the report had been overstated and was essentially incorrect," said Seymour Hersh in a 1993 article. "And none of the Clinton Administration officials have claimed that there was any empirical evidence - a 'smoking gun' -directly linking Saddam or any of his senior advisers to the alleged assassination attempt. The case against Iraq was, and remains, circumstantial."

29) And let's not forget this little classic: "The International Atomic Energy Agency says that a report cited by Bush as evidence that Iraq in 1998 was 'six months away' from developing a nuclear weapon does not exist. 'There's never been a report like that issued from this agency,' said Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA's chief spokesman."

30) And finally there is my favorite, the British Dossier, a highly anticipated document, touted as the piece of the puzzle that would unconditionally convince the world that Saddam is the greatest threat to humanity since...well... since George W. Bush.

That's right. it was revealed that the UK dossier on Iraq is a sham:

"Downing Street was last night plunged into acute international embarrassment after it emerged that large parts of the British government's latest dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on "intelligence material" - were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old."

So did "Downing Street" apologize for deceiving the world and presenting heavily plagiarized, years-old information put together by post-graduate students in California? Not on your life. Even after being caught red-handed, they brazenly and unapologetically retorted:

"Dismissing the gathering controversy as the latest example of media obsession with spin, officials insisted it in no way undermines the underlying truth of the dossier, whose contents had been re-checked with British intelligence sources. 'The important thing is that it is accurate,' said one source."

It was not accurate.

So, in summary, remember that you will always be closer to the truth if you simply disbelieve whatever the Administration says. As a rule of thumb, you should remember what the UN inspectors said about the information that they regularly receive from the Bush Administration:

“U.N. sources have told CBS News that American tips have lead to one dead end after another…. So frustrated have the inspectors become that one source has referred to the U.S. intelligence they've been getting as "garbage after garbage after garbage."

For the complete stories on these lies, check out these past politicalstrategy.org articles:

“The Biggest Catch Yet? Or the Biggest Lie Yet?”

"Bush Undermines UN Inspectors"

"Hoaxes and Demonstrations"

"The First Attack Made Bush. Would a Second Attack Unmake Him?"

"It's the Credibility, Stupid"

"Bush, Iraq, al Qaeda and the Art of Lying"

"If Blix n' Bush Were Under Oath"

"Blix n' Bush: Guilty Until Proven Innocent"

"Seeds of Destruction: What Keeps Bush From Planting Evidence of WMD in Iraq?"

[LoungeMachine]

http://www.politicalstrategy.org/2003_03_10_weblog_archive.htm

LINK


And these were the lies listed as of 3.10.03



I'll see if I can't find the updated list of lies for ASSVibe and Warpig

[Nickdfresh]

When all is said and done, the reliance on "CURVEBALL" was a biggest lie of all...

[Warham]

Liars! All of them.

I'm boycotting the polls in three years.

[DrMaddVibe]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
http://www.politicalstrategy.org/2003_03_10_weblog_archive.htm

LINK


And these were the lies listed as of 3.10.03



I'll see if I can't find the updated list of lies for ASSVibe and Warpig

Please do!

The current list so far isn't from Bush stating anything remotely plausible to a run up towards military action. The only thing I remember is him standing before the UN holding THEM accountable for their actions and their lip service. Now, I do believe that there are WMD. Have we found all of them? No. Will we? Not without the Iraqi's assistance. To deny their existence is moronic. The Russians, French, Germans and even we, the US dealt them the WMD. This is why everyone believed that Saddam had them.

[Hardrock69]

Scott Ritter demonstrated that what WMDs they had were destroyed long before Chimpy sent our troops over there.

[DrMaddVibe]

Scott Ritter?

That pedophile admitted he was stonewalled!

I don't think its worth anyone's time to drag that assclown into this.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38213

* A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for human testing of BW agents and "that Iraqi officials working to prepare the U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N." Why was Saddam interested in testing biological-warfare agents on humans if he didn't have a biological-weapons program?

* "Reference strains" of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents were found beneath the sink in the home of a prominent Iraqi BW scientist. "We thought it was a big deal," a senior administration official said. "But it has been written off [by the press] as a sort of 'starter set.'"

* New research on BW-applicable agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin that were not declared to the United Nations.

* A line of unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, or drones, "not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 kilometers [311 miles], 350 kilometers [217 miles] beyond the permissible limit."

* "Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited Scud-variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the U.N."

* "Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] -- well beyond the 150-kilometer-range limit [93 miles] imposed by the U.N. Missiles of a 1,000-kilometer range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East, including Ankara [Turkey], Cairo [Egypt] and Abu Dhabi [United Arab Emirates]."

In addition, through interviews with Iraqi scientists, seized documents and other evidence, the ISG learned the Iraqi government had made "clandestine attempts between late 1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300-kilometer-range [807 miles] ballistic missiles -- probably the No Dong -- 300-kilometer-range [186 miles] antiship cruise missiles and other prohibited military equipment," Kay reported.

In testimony before Congress on March 30, Duelfer, revealed the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical- and biological-warfare agents.

The ISG also found a previously undeclared program to build a "high-speed rail gun," a device apparently designed for testing nuclear-weapons materials. That came in addition to 500 tons of natural uranium stockpiled at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad, which International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky acknowledged to Insight had been intended for "a clandestine nuclear-weapons program."

In taking apart Iraq's clandestine procurement network, Duelfer said his investigators had discovered that "the primary source of illicit financing for this system was oil smuggling conducted through government-to-government protocols negotiated with neighboring countries [and] from kickback payments made on contracts set up through the U.N. oil-for-food program."

What the president's critics and the media widely have portrayed as the most dramatic failure of the U.S. case against Saddam has been the claimed failure to find "stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons. But in a June 2003 Washington Post op-ed, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus called such criticism "a distortion and a trivialization of a major threat to international peace and security."

The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction concluded that Saddam "probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons [MT] and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW [chemical warfare] agents -- much of it added in the last year."

That assessment was based, in part, on conclusions contained in the final report from U.N. weapons inspectors in 1999, which highlighted discrepancies in what the Iraqis reported to the United Nations and the amount of precursor chemicals U.N. arms inspectors could document Iraq had imported but for which it no longer could account.

Until now, Bush's critics say, no stockpiles of CW agents made with those precursors have been found. The snap conclusion they draw is that the administration "lied" to the American people to create a pretext for invading Iraq.

But what are "stockpiles" of CW agents supposed to look like? Was anyone seriously expecting Saddam to have left behind freshly painted warehouses packed with chemical munitions, all neatly laid out in serried rows, with labels written in English?

Or did they think that a captured Saddam would guide U.S. troops to smoking vats full of nerve gas in an abandoned factory?

Stockpiles found

In fact, as recent evidence made public by a former operations officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority's intelligence unit in Iraq shows, some of those stockpiles have been found - not all at once, and not all in nice working order -- but found all the same.

Douglas Hanson was a U.S. Army cavalry reconnaissance officer for 20 years, and a veteran of Gulf War I. He was an atomic demolitions munitions security officer and a nuclear, biological and chemical defense officer. As a civilian analyst in Iraq last summer, he worked for an operations intelligence unit of the CPA in Iraq, and later, with the newly formed Ministry of Science and Technology, which was responsible for finding new, nonlethal employment for Iraqi WMD scientists.

In an interview with Insight and in an article he wrote for the online magazine AmericanThinker.com, Hanson examines reports from U.S. combat units and public information confirming that many of Iraq's CW stockpiles have indeed been found.

Until now, however, journalists have devoted scant attention to this evidence, in part because it contradicts the story line they have been putting forward since the U.S.-led inspections began after the war.

But another reason for the media silence may stem from the seemingly undramatic nature of the "finds" Hanson and others have described. The materials that constitute Saddam's chemical-weapons "stockpiles" look an awful lot like pesticides, which they indeed resemble.

"Pesticides are the key elements in the chemical-agent arena," Hanson says. "In fact, the general pesticide chemical formula (organophosphate) is the 'grandfather' of modern-day nerve agents."

The United Nations was fully aware that Saddam had established his chemical-weapons plants under the guise of a permitted civilian chemical-industry infrastructure. Plants inspected in the early 1990s as CW production facilities had been set up to appear as if they were producing pesticides, or in the case of a giant plant near Fallujah, chlorine, which is used to produce mustard gas.

When coalition forces entered Iraq, "huge warehouses and caches of 'commercial and agricultural' chemicals were seized and painstakingly tested by Army and Marine chemical specialists," Hanson writes. "What was surprising was how quickly the ISG refuted the findings of our ground forces and how silent they have been on the significance of these caches."

Caches of "commercial and agricultural" chemicals don't match the expectation of "stockpiles" of chemical weapons. But, in fact, that is precisely what they are. "At a very minimum," Hanson tells Insight, "they were storing the precursors to restart a chemical-warfare program very quickly."

Kay and Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, telling Congress under oath that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the materials to relaunch production of chemical and biological weapons at a moment's notice. At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large "agricultural supply" area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex" that was shown to reporters -- with unpleasant results.

"More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump -- evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."

That wasn't the only significant find by coalition troops of probable CW stockpiles, Hanson believes. Near the northern Iraqi town of Bai'ji, where Saddam had built a chemical-weapons plant known to the United States from nearly 12 years of inspections, elements of the 4th Infantry Division found 55-gallon drums containing a substance identified through mass spectrometry analysis as cyclosarin -- a nerve agent.

Nearby were surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, gas masks and a mobile laboratory that could have been used to mix chemicals at the site.

"Of course, later tests by the experts revealed that these were only the ubiquitous pesticides that everybody was turning up," Hanson says. "It seems Iraqi soldiers were obsessed with keeping ammo dumps insect-free, according to the reading of the evidence now enshrined by the conventional wisdom that 'no WMD stockpiles have been discovered.'"

At Taji -- an Iraqi weapons complex as large as the District of Columbia -- U.S. combat units discovered more "pesticides" stockpiled in specially built containers, smaller in diameter but much longer than the standard 55-gallon drum.

Hanson says he still recalls the military sending digital images of the canisters to his office, where his boss at the Ministry of Science and Technology translated the Arabic-language markings. "They were labeled as pesticides," he says. "Gee, you sure have got a lot of pesticides stored in ammo dumps."

Again, this January, Danish forces found 120-millimeter mortar shells filled with a mysterious liquid that initially tested positive for blister agents. But subsequent tests by the United States disputed that finding.

"If it wasn't a chemical agent, what was it?" Hanson asks. "More pesticides? Dish-washing detergent? From this old soldier's perspective, I gain nothing from putting a liquid in my mortar rounds unless that stuff will do bad things to the enemy."

The discoveries Hanson describes are not dramatic. And that's the problem: Finding real stockpiles in grubby ammo dumps doesn't fit the image the media and the president's critics carefully have fed to the public of what Iraq's weapons ought to look like. A senior administration official who has gone through the intelligence reporting from Iraq as well as the earlier reports from U.N. arms inspectors refers to another well-documented allegation.

"The Iraqis admitted they had made 3.9 tons of VX," a powerful nerve gas, but claimed they had never weaponized it. The U.N. inspectors "felt they had more. But where did it go?" The Iraqis never provided any explanation of what had happened to their VX stockpiles.

What does 3.9 tons of VX look like? "It could fit in one large garage," the official says. Assuming, of course, that Saddam would assemble every bit of VX gas his scientists had produced at a single site, that still amounts to one large garage in an area the size of the state of California.

Senior administration officials stress that the investigation will continue as inspectors comb through millions of pages of documents in Iraq and attempt to interview Iraqi weapons scientists who have been trained all their professional lives to conceal their activities from the outside world.

"The conditions under which the ISG is working are not very conducive," one official said. "But this president wants the truth to come out. This is not an exercise in spinning or censoring."

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
Please do!

...Now, I do believe that there are WMD. Have we found all of them? No. Will we? Not without the Iraqi's assistance. To deny their existence is moronic. The Russians, French, Germans and even we, the US dealt them the WMD. This is why everyone believed that Saddam had them.


Now that's funny...


And delusional...


Anymore "tin-foil" beanie jokes ASSVIBE from your nihilist world?:D

Yeah, tons and tons of weaponized chem. and bio. agents were in the Iraqi arsenal; they just used a giant magic wand to make them go "poof" and disappear...

There are tons of artillery shells, ammo, and other explosives that were lying around unsecured that the insurgents now use to make IED bombs, but somehow the IRAQI's managed to control and hide all of their weapons after their army dissipated. And oh yeah, a ruthless regime with nothing to lose DIDN'T USE THEM on the coalition. Sounds very plausible...

No evidence after a substantial search and million$ offered in reward money. No. There were no real stockpiles of chemical weapons in IRAQ. Heck, they could have found more stuff buried in Maryland left over from WWI...

It was made up by essentially ONE GUY TALKING OUT OF HIS ASS!! The corrupt, IRANIAN spy & dick-bag Aman CHALIBI's brother! AKA "CURVEBALL"
http://www.prosportspictures.com/images/mlb/washington-nationals/2005/05-president-bush-first-pitch-sm.jpg

[Nickdfresh]

Funny, but when I actually read this shitty article:

"Saddam's WMD
have been found
New evidence unveils chemical, biological, nuclear, ballistic arms"

They don't mention any weapons actually being found? Isn't that called lying?:D

"There might of been a 55-gallon drum that could have had some form of VX gas agent but test were later inconclusive...blah blah"

Here's an example of really shitty journalism that would make JOSEF GOEBBELS proud:


"More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump -- evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."

So, basically, no weapons were found, only two IRAQ solders with some form of poisoning (with can come from pesticides since they attack the nervous system), and some pesticides. He then uses conjecture and makes some statements not backed up by any evidence:

But yet...


That wasn't the only significant find by coalition troops of probable CW stockpiles,

"Significant find?" LMAO, They just said that basically no weapons were found by the inspectors in IRAQ, so BUSH's own military working group is covering up WMDs. How implausible! But now it's a "significant find"....:D


Hanson believes. Near the northern Iraqi town of Bai'ji, where Saddam had built a chemical-weapons plant known to the United States from nearly 12 years of inspections, elements of the 4th Infantry Division found 55-gallon drums containing a substance identified through mass spectrometry analysis as cyclosarin -- a nerve agent.

Oh, "he beLIEves" now? Well, I supposed the 4thID covered it up since they're "Liberals" out to destroy the BUSH Admin. right?

Uhuhuhuhuhuhuh!

I guess he had no proof, so that's why he "beLIEves."

Show me one fact in that article that has a substanative WMD being discovered?:)

LMAO

[Nickdfresh]

Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month
Critical September Report to Be Final Word

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2129-2005Jan11.html) Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 12, 2005; Page A01

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.

Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found, but the White House has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country. But the intelligence official said that possibility is very small.

Duelfer is back in Washington, finishing some addenda to his September report before it is reprinted.

"There's no particular news in them, just some odds and ends," the intelligence official said. The Government Printing Office will publish it in book form, the official said.

The CIA declined to authorize any official involved in the weapons search to speak on the record for this story. The intelligence official offered an authoritative account of the status of the hunt on the condition of anonymity. The agency did confirm that Duelfer is wrapping up his work and will not be replaced in Baghdad.

The ISG, established to search for weapons but now enmeshed in counterinsurgency work, remains under Pentagon command and is being led by Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Joseph McMenamin.

Intelligence officials said there is little left for the ISG to investigate because Duelfer's last report answered as many outstanding questions as possible. The ISG has interviewed every person it could find connected to programs that ended more than 10 years ago, and every suspected site within Iraq has been fully searched, or stripped bare by insurgents and thieves, according to several people involved in the weapons hunt.

Satellite photos show that entire facilities have been dismantled, possibly by scrap dealers who sold off parts and equipment to buyers around the world.

"The September 30 report is really pretty much the picture," the intelligence official said.

"We've talked to so many people that someone would have said something. We received nothing that contradicts the picture we've put forward. It's possible there is a supply someplace, but what is much more likely is that [as time goes by] we will find a greater substantiation of the picture that we've already put forward."

Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the weapons hunt, and there has been no public accounting of the money. A spokesman for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said the entire budget and the expenditures would remain classified.

Several hundred military translators and document experts will continue to sift through millions of pages of documents on paper and computer media sitting in a storeroom on a U.S. military base in Qatar.

But their work is focused on material that could support possible war crimes charges or shed light on the fate of Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, a Navy pilot who was shot down in an F/A-18 fighter over central Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991, the opening night of the Persian Gulf War. Although he was initially reported as killed in action, Speicher's status was changed to missing after evidence emerged that he had ejected alive from his aircraft.

The work on documents is not connected to weapons of mass destruction, officials said, and a small group of Iraqi scientists still in U.S. military custody are not being held in connection with weapons investigations, either.

Three people involved with the ISG said the weapons teams made several pleas to the Pentagon to release the scientists, who have been interviewed extensively. All three officials specifically mentioned Gen. Amir Saadi, who was a liaison between Hussein's government and U.N. inspectors; Rihab Taha, a biologist nicknamed "Dr. Germ" years ago by U.N. inspectors; her husband, Amir Rashid, the former oil minister; and Huda Amash, a biologist whose extensive dealings with U.N. inspectors earned her the nickname "Mrs. Anthrax."

None of the scientists has been involved in weapons programs since the 1991 Gulf War, the ISG determined more than a year ago, and all have cooperated with investigators despite nearly two years of jail time without charges. U.S. officials previously said they were being held because their denials of ongoing weapons programs were presumed to be lies; now, they say the scientists are being held in connection with the possible war crimes trials of Iraqis.

It has been more than a year since any Iraqi scientist was arrested in connection with weapons of mass destruction. Many of those questioned and cleared have since left Iraq, one senior official said, acknowledging for the first time that the "brain drain" that has long been feared "is well underway."

"A lot of it is because of the kidnapping industry" in Iraq, the official said. The State Department has been trying to implement programs designed to keep Iraqi scientists from seeking weapons-related work in neighboring countries, such as Syria and Iran.

Since March 2003, nearly a dozen people working for or with the weapons hunt have lost their lives to the insurgency. The most recent deaths came in November, when Duelfer's convoy was attacked during a routine mission around Baghdad and two of his bodyguards were killed.