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[Editor: ignore=off]Seems not..
"We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place." - Colin Powell, FEB 2001
Posted by The Truth at November 5, 2005 10:39 AMGood work Mary. It's easy to see that the neocons are reduced to the "honest mistake-better safe than sorry" defense. Which in itself is an attempt to deflect attention from the fact that they lied to start a war of choice that has made America less safe and practically handed most of Iraq's oil, the true reason for the war, to Iran.
Posted by rlp at November 5, 2005 10:43 AMThere was an international effort to isolate and contain Saddam Hussien. What Clinton said and did was a part of that effort. If he made an allegation or threatened force it was designed to isolate, contain, and pressure Saddam. It was designed to ensure he had no WMD and was not a threat WITHOUT the disaster this occupation has been. And what Clinton and eveybody else did and said worked perfectly (for everybody but Halliburton).
"We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place." - Colin Powell, FEB 2001
Posted by The Truth at November 5, 2005 10:43 AMHey Bendito,
At what point would the US have been at a disadvantage in fighting a war against Iraq?
Posted by The Truth at November 5, 2005 10:45 AMBendito is almost as full of it as Kevin Drum -- when I saw that post yesterday, my first impulse was to call Kevin on his bullshit. Fortunately, my better judgment prevailed, and I took my surfing elsewhere.
No, a war was not inevitable. No, not everyone thought Iraq was an imminent WMD threat, whether conventional or nuclear. With the exception of his secret police / domestic terror apparatus, Saddam was a spent force. Saddam was not even a threat to his neighbors, let alone the USA. If the Cheney administration and it's sock puppet preznit had patiently tightened the screws in 2003 instead of invading, Saddam probably would have been deposed in a coup by the fall. But invading, come hell or high water, is what Dubya had set his sights on. And now, thanks to the Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld/Rove axis of incompetence, Iraq has been turned into a terrorist breeding ground, and we are truly fucked.
As for Kevin Drum's assertion that "everyone believed Saddam was a WMD threat" -- that is pure self-serving bullshit. No Kevin, just because you had your head up your ass, doesn't mean everyone did. If you scratched the surface of CIA intel, it was obvious that we were in the dark since 1998. This might have translated into a massive invisible WMD buildup, or it might havw meant that Saddam had nothing. The facts have borne out the latter.
One more point -- Scott Ritter said that Saddam's WMD's had been 95-100% destroyed in the first UN weapons inspection program, and there was no evidence that Iraq had reconstituted it's WMD capabilities. Guess who was right -- and guess who was dissed as a crackpot appeaser? Kevin Drum and his NeoCon fellow travelers were the crackpots -- Scott Ritter was right.
Posted by ck at November 5, 2005 10:52 AMFor reasons that he has never really explained, Kevin Drum is stuck in the "there were good reasons for invading Iraq, the problem was how it was done" camp. While this argument may seem to be beaten to death, and while many will claim it is no longer relevant, it is the key to our future.
If Americans leave this Iraq disaster with the belief that the only problem was 'how it was done,' then it is only a matter of time before some other War Party takes power and claims that they know how to do it right.
The problem was not and is not 'how it was done,' but rather the fact that it was done at all. The U.S. invaded a country that was no threat to anyone. Our Brave and Beloved Troops killed people who were innocent of any wrongdoing at all. The Shock and Awe killed thousands of innocent people who had no military purpose or 'terrorist' ties. How do we know? Because our Brave and Beloved Troops don't even bother to count the dead and our government does everything in its power to prevent anyone else from doing so. But then, you don't count the dead when God's on your side.
Posted by James E. Powell at November 5, 2005 10:53 AMKUDOS for this important post----the "Everyone Believed In WMD" defense is the last Bavarian alpine refuge for the fleeing NeoconNazis foot soldiers and general Bush stooges.
Everyone most certainly did not belive it. The Downing Street Memo demolishes the claim.
For any thinking, rational person, that is.
Posted by euzoius at November 5, 2005 11:00 AMBetter we fought it from a position of advantage.
Yeah, and look how that's working out for us. Over 2,000 soldiers killed, tens of thousands wounded, uncounted Iraqi civilians dead. And the cost? I don't know how this country is ever going to pay its obligations to China for the cost of this war. Yeah, we really got the advantage on this one.
Posted by ann at November 5, 2005 11:01 AMThus he inferred that it was okay for people to support using the military against Iraq. Well, that statement is wrong.
I think, you are overstating your case. That statement is clearly wrong. The problem is that you're the one expressing it. As much as I have giving credence to the Kerry campaign claims, there were good reasons to support the threat of use of force, not the actual use of force. In order to understand the issue, you need to be familiar with cultural issues surrounding blustering defiance from Arab nation leaders. Unfortunately, most on the Left have about as much understanding of the cultural issues involved as Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the Right. That is a sad statement, especially since those on the Left tend to assert that they care about cultural differences, very much unlike the likes of the Big Fat Idiot.
With Arab leaders, the threats are far more important than actions and more incendiary the threat, the better. What Bush and his neo-con advisors could never understand is that Saddam would have never follow up on his alleged desires as long as US militaristic rhetoric was backed up by occasional bombings, however insignificant. That's how the political mind operates in that region--the hierarchy had been clearly established, and Saddam was clearly the weaker, but he still needed the bluster to demonstrate that he's still in charge locally and that he's still the strongman, even if he's impotent internationally. It's like a chihuahua yapping against a doberman, but backing off and ducking for cover as soon as the bigger dog goes on alert or appears to be making a move toward the agressor. What the State Department needed was not a WMD expert, but a cultural anthropologist.
This is also the same problem that John Bolton has always had and which is why he's absolutely unqualified for a diplomatic position. There is no question that you always want to negotiate from a position of strength, but you don't want to overplay your hand either, or you risk being recognized as a stupid bully and ignored by all sides when the situations are too delicate for a big stick.
Another problem was that, as was the case with Libya ten years earlier, our enemy was really Saddam, not Iraq. As such, the situation could have been handled by weakening his hold, not by attacking the country. Note the reversal that we've accomplished--in the region now the enemy is not George Bush, it's "America". And rebuilding the good will that we lost will be increadibly hard. Bringing Chalabi to Washington (at AEI yesterday) only makes it worse.
Posted by buck turgidson at November 5, 2005 11:25 AMWhat's so disappointing about this kind of post is that it's simply the polar opposite of the garbage coming from the right:
Lefty: "I KNEW there weren't any WMD!"
Right: I KNEW Saddam had WMD before he gave them all to Syria!"
The general consensus by almost everyone was that we should ASSUME Saddam had WMD. To do otherwise would have been foolish. But proving that assumption required inspectors, which is the right path to follow with any country including Iran and North Korea. So we got the inspectors back in, then Bush started his war and found no WMD.
It was starting a war to prove what the inspection were already proving that was wrong. The threat of force, etc., was right - and we're going to need to do that again in the future. (Anyone who can imagine a future in which we don't have to force some country to allow inspectors in is living in a fantasy.)
But all of this is getting too close to Kerry's position, and I know that's a no-no around here.
So yeah, you were right. But that doesn't get us anywhere, and saying it all the time just makes those people who got duped feel stupid. I know that's your aim, of course, but it's not going to get you any votes.
Posted by Elegiac at November 5, 2005 11:30 AMI sure as hell thought Saddam had likely, though limited, stockpiles. Before the Blix inspections, anyway. After those, it was pretty clear what was going on.
Posted by dj moonbat at November 5, 2005 11:43 AMThe question for most Americans was not and never will be 'did Saddam have WMD?' That is why this discussion/argument can never go beyond pointless haggling.
The widespread American response to 9/11, coupled with the long-standing resentment against Arabs and Muslims generally, was 'Let's kill some Arabs and Muslims."
The desire to do so was so strong that the thinnest of pretexts would lead Americans to support any war against any Arab or Muslim nation. The WMD argument was a thin pretext, but it was thick enough for most Americans and it remains so. Americans feel very self-righteous about their military's right and duty to kill other people. They will never, never admit that it was wrong or a bad idea.
Posted by James E. Powell at November 5, 2005 11:46 AMThis whole question about "everyone believed that Sadaam had WMD" is, of course, false. Everyone involved in any way at a policy level used whatever was available to protect his position and justify his predisposed desired outcome: Bush and the right wing wanted a war, Democrats in Congress were very successfully intimidated because of the post-9/11 climate of fear. And all of it enabled by the so-called 'liberal media'.
Anything that smacked of disputing the party line that Sadaam had WMD's had to be torn out at the roots - hence the attack on Valerie Plame, which I think the evidence shows was really an attack on her front company.
I have no satisfying explanation for why most Democrats have behaved as they did over Iraq. Subsequent explanations notwithstanding, they have dug themselves a hole from which they are having trouble attacking Bush.
The thing that is most frightening about the whole Iraq situation is this: we have the mother of all cockups - militarily, financially and morally - and there appears to be no-one, NO-ONE willing to organize and conduct a domestic fight against Bush on it.
Posted by JB (not the U.N. John Bolton) at November 5, 2005 12:05 PMI have no satisfying explanation for why most Democrats have behaved as they did over Iraq.
Well, I'll give you my take on that, J.B. After 911 happened, most Americans thought (at least briefly) that we were facing a Pearl Harbor type situation. Remember how young people volenteered for the military? Americans were willing to do what was needed to secure national survival. The neocons took that and used it for evil and hid their manipulations well enough to prevent meaningful opposition to their policies until they had fait accompli.
The known facts matter, there's no shame in supporting the Bush position in late 2001-early '02, even I had hopes that the precieved emergency would be handled in a non political, national unity way. The shame is to not oppose evil today, as Hillary will not or even worse, to still be defending the undefendable today.
Posted by rlp at November 5, 2005 12:50 PMrlp,
While there were some propaganda pieces on TV and in newspapers about young people joining the military, actual recruitment did not increase post 9/11. This, like other attempts to turn 9/11 into Pearl Harbor, is ridiculous.
The only way one could hope that anything 'non-political' or any 'national unity' would have been components or goals of Bush's resposne to 9/11 would be if one knew absolutely nothing about Bush, Cheney and the gang of thieves that were installed in power in 2000. It is just not their way, never has been, never will be.
Most Americans don't want to face the truth about the real relationship between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq because it is just too ugly. To most Americans, 9/11 was a humiliation, an affront by inferiors. It had to be avenged. "They" had to pay. That Americans are too ignorant and too racist to bother separating who "they" are from amongst the great mass of non-white, non-Euro, non-Christians in the world is really not viewed as a problem.
Buck, your objection to my statement is noted and I agree that I was overstating the argument.
Nevertheless, the real problem is whether or not we should have been worrying about Saddam in 2002. According to the evidence from people who really knew, Saddam was not a threat and there was no reason to even worry about making our own threat to use force at that time.
Elegiac, I do not blame people for being taken in - this was a true conspiracy on the part of Bush and his administration to take the country to war. As yesterday's TNR editorial stated about what the indictment said about the reasons for going to war:
It shows how administration officials--particularly Libby and his boss, Dick Cheney--interfered with the public's understanding of a key bit of intelligence, and how they tried to conceal that interference. Which raises one of the greatest outstanding questions about the war: To what extent did the Bush administration manipulate the public?
Libby authored many of Cheney's most incendiary prewar lines and urged them upon other officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell. Cheney and Libby suggested that Saddam Hussein had conspired with Osama bin Laden to stage the September 11 attacks and that Saddam was building nuclear weapons. Of course, these claims--which constituted the primary (though not the only) rationale for the invasion--unraveled as soon as the war began. But what bothered Cheney and Libby was not simply the fact that their assertions had been wrong, but the growing speculation that they had known those assertions were wrong (or at least dubious) even as they made them.
We have enough evidence to know the Bush administration statements were wrong and that they knew that when they made them. People like George Tenet said that in Feb 2002. The Blair government admitted it in their secret memo. Senator Bob Graham who headed the Senate Intelligence Commmittee and therefore was privy to the intelligence also knew that Saddam wasn't the threat that the warmongers were saying and that even the threat of war was a distraction from our real enemies.
What can we do to prevent the next runup to an ill-advised war if we don't get to the bottom of this one? That is the real reason we need to pick at this wound.
Posted by Mary at November 5, 2005 01:15 PM
James Powell resurrects memories of the immediate post-9/11 period, particularly of the flags flying from SUV's and pick-up trucks. "Never Forget 9/11". One would almost think that it was the first time in the history of the world that a country had been attacked.
As a naturalized citizen I have never really understood why such a large percentage of the population of the world's most powerful country seem to operate from a perspective that is informed largely by fear, thin-skinnedness and xenophobia.
I have theories and suspicions, but they are even less flattering than Mr. Powell's.
According to the evidence from people who really knew, Saddam was not a threat and there was no reason to even worry about making our own threat to use force at that time.
I certainly agree with the first statement. I have only qualified agreement with the second. I see the threat of use of force as one of the weapons in a diplomatic arsenal. For example, Thatcher used it against Argentina in the Falklands, but it was ineffective. This is why the "war" resulted. However, there is every reason to believe--as there was from the beginning--that simple threats worked against Saddam. Saddam did not care about the US. Saddam did not care about Israel. He only cared about maintaining the stranglehold on his own people and building more golden palaces for himself and his cronies (just like the Bush-Cheney cabal). Militant rhetorical attacks on the US were a means to an end, nothing more. The games he played with the weapons inspectors were an attempt to establish an illusion of complete control--he did not actually care what the inspectors saw, he just wanted to jerk their chain a bit to show who's boss.
None of this justifies the use of force. Some of it does justify the threat, because the only way to confront Saddam would have been with the same kind of bullshit rhetoric, but, because he's far more skilled at it (he's been in the culture his whole life, while most of the people here don't even want to understand this aspect of the culture), it would have been a losing battle. So, it was important to send him a message that may not have been equivalent, but that he could understand. Telling him that he would lose his position permanently if he persisted would have been sufficient to keep him in check. Compare the situation to Lybia. Quaddafi still blustered for a couple of months after the bombing that killed members of his family. But everyone knew that it was over. He has not been exactly a model citizen since then, but you've hardly heard any rhetorical attacks from him since then. In fact, he even volunteered in recent years to have Libya mediate other disputes (and it was taken seriously, which would have been impossible 15 years ago).
However, a militaristic message can only be effective if people know that 1) you have the ability to carry it out and 2) you are not simply bluffing. The former is easy--the 1991 Gulf war proved beyond doubt the inferiority of the Iraqi army. The second is a bit tougher, which is why I said that occasional bombings of non-civilian targets would have sent the message loud and clear.
It is crystal clear that removal of Saddam and concern over WMDs were never the real reasons for the invasion. The purpose, from the beginning, was to establish a military base, a foothold in a relatively secular country, since Saudi Arabia was never a long-term option. The irony is, of course, that if they really wanted secular control, they would have been far better off keeping Saddam in power. That had both Saudi Arabia and Iran in check. Now that the regime is no longer purely secular and is rather weak and splintered, Iraq makes for a completely useless ally. ANd the insurgents make continued military presence a problem. So, in the end, the neo-cons shot themselves in the foot, as well as killing 2000+ Americans and countless others, as well as destroying a considerable chunk of the Mesopotamian cultural heritage and loosening the social structure in Iraq. All of that does not even take into account the general destabilization of the region and offering rhetorical weapons to Islamo-terrorists that they did not previously have.
The only way that we could establish any good will in short order is by taking the entire Bush administration and, after a brief show trial, lining them up against a wall and shooting them as traitors. That's not going to happen. Perhaps the Idiot-in-Chief might get impeached should he choose to pardon Libby before trial or the Puppetmaster might resign if chooses not to pardon, but the main apparatus will remain in place. I think the most poetic justice would be for the next president to appoint Cheney (over his objections, of course) the Ambassador to Iraq and withdraw any security protection.
Posted by buck turgidson at November 5, 2005 01:58 PMOn January 10, 2001, Clinton's defense Secretary, William Cohen said, "Well, Saddam Hussein's forces are in a state where he cannot pose a threat to his neighbors at this point. We have been successful, through the sanctions regime, to really shut off most of the revenue that will be going to build his—rebuild his military." If Saddam Hussein was no longer a threat to his neighbors, he could hardly be considered a threat to the United States. If I recall correctly, Cohen is a Republican.
Early in the Bush Administration, Colin Powell also said that Iraq was effectively contained. Funny how Powell's words changed within a year.
Republicans like David Brooks like to pretend that there was no difference between the Clinton Administration's 2000 assessment of Iraq and Bush's 2002 assessment of Iraq. Both assessment overestimated what Saddam Hussein had but the 2002 report was greatly exaggerated compared to the 2000 report and contained known falsehoods. One also has to remember that the neocons were very active in Washington during the 1990s and I suspect they were successful in influencing the so-called conventional wisdom about Iraq.
Posted by Craig at November 5, 2005 02:00 PM"The Everyone Believed Saddam Had an Active WMD Program Canard"
The biggest problem with this deception, is that it comes from a group of liars with no morals or character. Ideology trumps everything. Why does anyone in their right minds pay any attention to it?
Another major problem is that these liars know this garbage will resonate with a group of brain washed citizens. The trolls on this blog, other blogs and other documented discussions continue confirming that phenomenon.
Instead of talking about what Bush and Cheney knew, when they knew it and what they did, this garbage acts as a diversion. Even if they didn't intentionally lie, the country should be at a minimum holding them accountable for incompetantly leading this nation into a $1 billion a week war with no positive returns to the U.S. public. A coach or manager would have been fired already. The Spaniards had the guts to hold their leadership accountable for failures. U.S. citizens are to brain washed and afraid to hold their republican leaders accountable.
Why are these incompetent criminals being held accountable? I think James Powell hits the nail on the head!!!
Posted by smooth at November 5, 2005 02:20 PMI see the threat of use of force as one of the weapons in a diplomatic arsenal.
This is true, but clearly trusting the Bush administration with the gun was a mistake. This has always been the problem with this war. People that voted to give Bush the authority to threaten force said they were trusting that Bush would use diplomatic means to address the problems with Saddam. But that trust was misplaced. Remember why Brady Kiesling resigned from his diplomatic post in Greece? It was because he finally realized that the Bush administration didn't want a diplomatic solution.
KIESLING: I was asked to make arguments, for example, on the tactical issue...and in fact, this is a very legitimate argument. We have said over and over again the only way we can prevent a war is if we persuade Saddam Hussein that we will go to war unless he disarms. That's a perfectly valid argument, we made it.
That argument however, is only valid if there is in fact a genuine possibility that we will not go to war if he complies. And what I realized as I watched the rhetoric coming out of Washington, as I watched our own message, was that we were going to go to war regardless. This was not a tactical issue.
We had I think misled the US Congress into writing a blank check for the administration, we had misled I think our allies. And I did not feel comfortable with that. Once I realized the war was going to happen regardless of what Saddam did.
It does matter in whom you place your trust and for what reasons. It is too bad our country has to pay for the seriously misplaced trust of this administration.
Posted by Mary at November 5, 2005 03:01 PMThank-you, I was beginning to wonder if anyone remembered that Bob Graham tried to tell us forever ago that we needed to IMPEACH Bush waybackwhen. Then-Senator Bob Graham's credentials merited far more consideration than the MagicalDreamingMedia ever allowed him. Interesting how differently the two men (Goss and Graham) who had access to highly sensitive materials chose to serve their country in response to that knowledge.
Posted by Mary Stromberg at November 5, 2005 03:02 PMBTW, buck - even as someone who is on principle against the death penalty, rather like your proposal for how we could garner some good will at this pass.
Posted by Mary at November 5, 2005 03:08 PMCertainly very few people in "The City" (the financial heart of London and the main world centre for international currency trading and lending)believed a word of it. On the day of Mr Powell's presentation the Bloombergs were flying around with most people openly cotempteous of the bollock that was being presented. These were people paid to know what is going on in the world and they could see it for the shite it proved to be
Posted by Tim at November 5, 2005 03:11 PMI know you are all having a fine time with the "Bush Lied" or "Bush Manipulated" mantra but you forget there have been investigations and none have found that to the case. Yes Harry Reid managed to wail and gnash his teeth at perceived stalling but when the truth comes out the Democrats will look petty, partisan, and pussies (as usual). But is case the reports didn’t get into your little echo chambers here are some excerpts:
* In July 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan 500-page report that found numerous failures of intelligence gathering and analysis. As for the Bush Administration's role, "The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," (our emphasis).
• The Butler Report, published by the British in July 2004, similarly found no evidence of "deliberate distortion," although it too found much to criticize in the quality of prewar intelligence.
• The March 2005 Robb-Silberman report on WMD intelligence was equally categorical, finding "no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. . . .analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments. We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments."
• Finally, last Friday, there was Mr. Fitzgerald: "This indictment's not about the propriety of the war, and people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who are--have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel."
Good post... good comments
I'll add mine. Let's not forget these infamous comments about Hussein's arsenal and threat potential in 2001..
Below is a summary of the above link based on Powell's and Condi's own comments and words.
There you have it. Four to seven months before 9/11--and just 15 to 18 months before the drive to attack Iraq seriously revved up--the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor trumpeted that Iraq had a decimated military, no "significant capabilities" regarding WMD, and was so feeble that it couldn't even threaten the countries around it with conventional military power.
This still boils down to the fact that even if one thought Hussein was a threat (and he wasn't), there is more than one way to deal with that threat...and the only choice we were told of by this administration was War. Anything less was unpatriotic/unamerican.
Plus this is why is it was so important/necessary for the neocons to insinuate and promote the idea that Al quaeda be linked(falsely as we will once again learn about tomorrow in the NYT)to Hussein.
Posted by emal at November 5, 2005 03:40 PMThere have been investigations and none have found that to the case. Posted by Cyber SargeUnfortunately for your delusions, as yet, there have been no investigations that have had full and unrestricted access to all the necessary information about Bush's decision. However, the more that information slips out, the more the case is made that the Bush Administration cooked the intelligence and sold the war based on jingoism and disinformation. Posted by Mike at November 5, 2005 04:44 PM
On the day of the invasion I told family and friends that the invasion itself was the best proof that we knew there were no WMDs.
Posted by Brian Boru at November 5, 2005 05:01 PMI didn't believe it then either. But it's great to have some emails from back then to prove it to myself. I was in an online debate about Iraq with my high school classmates [class of 1960]. I don't know if the people who were arguing with me really believed the WMD thing either. They were too busy talking about Bush's piety and making Clinton stabs, I doubt they really thought about it a lot. It was just a sea of emails decorated with fluttering american flags and that fusion of religion and patriotism that was epidemic back then. They were mighty cool to me at a class reunion this last summer. I don't blame them. By that time, I was too mad to talk about it.
The "everyone thought it" argument is invalid, particularly coming from the Administration. If everyone thought it, it's because the Administration said it was true, knowing it wasn't.
Posted by Mickey at November 5, 2005 05:52 PMOh now I see. There hasn't been an investigation that supports your fantasy so they must be invalid.
Posted by Cyber Sarge at November 5, 2005 06:24 PMMillions marched in the streets in democracies the world over - even in the US itself. Plenty in the US chose not to drown by swimming against the tide, but they can be differentiated from war proponents and pro-war propagandists.
Posted by AlanDownunder at November 5, 2005 10:44 PMYou can't refute the comments made by Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Boxer, Pelosi, Kennedy, and the other hypcritical ilk. They said what they said.
Posted by at November 5, 2005 11:26 PMCyber Sarge,
See Eriposte's thread that just went up. Simply repeateing Rush's talking points won't earn you any credit.
As for your other comment,
Oh now I see. There hasn't been an investigation that supports your fantasy so they must be invalid.
This is meaningless. Your claim concerns a specific issue (misuse of intelligence) that has not been investigated. Instead, you cite investigations that are superficially connected to the issue and make no reference to it. The SR report only comments on the opinion of analysts interviewed that there was no pressure put on them. However, there is plenty of evidence that was never considered by the panel because it was not a part of their investigation to show that the information provided by those analysts was perverted, misstated and abused. To put it simply, analysts did not lie--it's the White House cronies that lied when they misrepresented this information.
What did you prove? That you work very well in an echo chamber?
Let's just face it, some people (and you know who you are) are just a lot slower in either realizing or admitting they have been duped by this administration. Good thing is that they are becoming the minority.
Posted by emal at November 6, 2005 04:43 AMYes, I saw Andrea Mitchell spout the "EVERYONE thought there were WMDs" line on TV.
Well, Hans Blix didn't, and between him and GWBush, I'll take Hans any day.
I'm surprised at Kevin Drum....he usually has insightful posts at his blog.
Posted by LizDexic at November 6, 2005 06:27 AMI would like sarge to explain how Fitzgerald's assertion has anything to do with Bush lying us into war. I would submit that Fitzie is stating the opposite; that his case has nothing to do with the debate over how we went to war. His case was concerned only with who outed Plame and who lied about it.
The Plame case does, however, illustrate the lengths the bushies will go to have their lies kept from the public. So maybe sarge is saying the coverup was going fine until Libby was stupid enough to lie to Fitzgerald?
Are you fine with Bush starting a war based on forged intelligence and outright lies that were evident in the beginning when Card said "you don't roll out a new product in August?" Well of course you are since you cite out of context phrases from reports you probably didn't read because if you did, you'd have found that they, in no way, exonerate Bush and his cronies.
As for Kevin, his continued support for the war even after it was obvious we were lied to, even after he helped expose some of those lies, turned me away from PA. He jumps on bandwagons too much for my taste - the "flamboyant Wilson lied" meme was the last straw. His most recent jumping on of the "everyone believed it" bandwagon is as pathetic for him as it is for the trolls that repeat it after their talking points blast fax from Mehlman instructed them to do so. "Everyone" did not believe it as many people have illustrated. So it's a dead meme, sarge.
Posted by iamcoyote at November 6, 2005 06:50 AMLet's suppose that Iraq was rife with Tabun, VX, mustard gas, and anthrax laden artillery shells and warheads back in 2002. How do artillery shells and warheads borne aloft by SCUD missiles with an ability to fire less than 200 miles downrange constitute a threat to the U.S.?
Posted by obelus at November 6, 2005 07:16 AMThere was an international effort to isolate and contain Saddam Hussien. What Clinton said and did was a part of that effort. If he made an allegation or threatened force or used force it was designed to isolate, contain, and pressure Saddam. It was designed to ensure he had no WMD and make it so he was not a threat. And it worked. Perfectly…. For everybody except Halliburton… But more importantly, it worked WITHOUT creating the disaster this invasion and occupation has been. To site this perfectly effective effort as justification for the treasonous, fraudulent meat grinder of a disaster Bush and Cheney got us into is as illogical as can be and perversely ironic to say the least.
"the real truth" and "Turgiston" are cowards for among many other things. addressing the quote below and the argument above.
"We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place." - Colin Powell - FEBUARY 24, 2001