This guy has had a theory for a while that Saddam hasn't actually had WMD for a while, and while I don't personally concur with his conclusions, his arguments are logical, and need to be addressed by those who posit a "Bush lied / there are no WMD" theory. Either way, it makes that position look silly... Food for thought: Returning to the Central Question By Lee Harris "Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction?" This question currently acts as a litmus test to distinguish between those who support the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq and those who condemn it. President Bush's supporters argue that the current lack of evidence of WMD's is no proof that such weapons will not be found in the near future -- and, of course, they may be right. But, virtually without exception, all those who argue that such weapons are still to be found devoutly wish that such weapons would be found as quickly as possible. For them, the discovery of WMD's hidden in the hills of Iraq would be looked upon as a cause for celebration, even if they were to be found in such a dilapidated condition that they could not possibly be considered as a serious threat to anyone's welfare. The Bush detractors, on the other hand, argue that the current lack of evidence of WMD's shows that Saddam Hussein did not possess such weaponry prior to the American invasion, from which one of two negative conclusions are promptly drawn: Either the administration was grossly incompetent, or else it was grossly deceitful. For the detractors, the discovery of a cache of concealed WMD's would prove a political embarrassment, if not disaster, since it would show that the reasons behind the decision to invade were neither incompetent nor deceitful. Despite their obvious differences, the positions taken by the two sides share an underlying premise. Both believe that what is really important about the WMD's issue is its impact on our own domestic politics. It will be good for the Republicans if they are found, and good for the Democrats if they are not. But does any of this really follow logically? Would the U.S., or the world, be better off if it could be proven that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction cleverly hidden around Iraq all along? Would it diminish the status of Saddam Hussein in the eyes of his admirers in the Arab world? To the contrary, from the perspective of the Arab street the discovery of such a cache would immensely redound to Saddam's glory, and the more lethal and sophisticated the cache turned out to be, the greater this glory would shine forth. Indeed, those in the Arab world -- who much against their will have come to see Saddam Hussein in his true light -- would now joyfully greet such a windfall discovery as a vindication of their original heroic image of him. The unearthing of such weapons would, in short, make Saddam look both competent and glamorous to those radical Muslims longing to find a Strong Man to pose against the West. Hard as this may be to grasp, the best possible outcome to the invasion of Iraq is the one that Bush's defenders dread, and that his detractors long for -- that no WMD's will ever be found in Iraq. And, indeed, if I were advising the President of the United States, I'd tell him to issue standing orders to dispose of any evidence of Iraqi WMD's the moment they were discovered, in order that no trace of their existence should ever see the light of day. Indeed, I am somewhat surprised that conspiracy enthusiasts have failed to notice this angle. If you are not a conspiracy theorist, however, you must face the fact that the Bush administration chose to justify the war against Iraq by claiming that Saddam Hussein was currently in the possession of WMD's. But if this is so, shouldn't Bush and his advisors be held accountable for this mistake? Before we answer this question, we must first notice that there are two ways of making a mistake. The first is the kind of mistake that we all made in school when we failed to give the right answer to a multiple choice question about the capital of Illinois. In this case, our wrong answer -- Chicago -- is one that we could have avoided had we simply consulted an almanac or encyclopedia, wherein we would have discovered the right answer -- Springfield. In short, our mistake is one that we could have avoided prior to making it, if only we had done our homework, and not the kind of mistake that can only come to light after we have made it. The second kind of mistake is radically different from the first. It occurs precisely because we have done our homework, and because we have consulted with experts about how to answer the question confronting us, only to discover, to our dismay and surprise, that the universally approved answer to our question was in fact wrong. To learn that you are wrong and everyone else is right is one thing; to learn that you are wrong, and everyone else is wrong as well, is quite another. The first involves a modest correction of one's error, while the second may well involve a more drastic reevaluation of our community's collective fund of knowledge. Furthermore, in those cases where this putative knowledge relates to questions of fundamental importance, this reevaluation may amount to what the American philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, has called a paradigm shift, defined as a radical rethinking of the basic premises that have led us, and the entire cognitive community of which we are a part, to make such a collective error in judgment. The Bush administration's mistake about Saddam Hussein's WMD's, if it indeed proves a mistake, will clearly be a mistake of the second kind, and not the first -- as President Clinton himself made clear during a recent appearance on the Larry King Show, during which he argued that the entire world intelligence community was convinced, prior to our invasion, that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD's. Seen from this perspective, the attempt to turn Bush's "mistake" into a partisan campaign issue is not merely regrettable; it is a dangerous distraction. It is to ignore, merely for the sake of ephemeral partisan advantage, the potential revelation contained in the administration's -- and the world's -- so called mistake, and thereby to miss the opportunity to make the necessary paradigm shift in our understanding of our current enemy. It is to divert our energies into domestic squabbling at the very time when we need most to focus them on the central question: How to make American safe from catastrophic terror. Our present peril arises not from the weapons of mass destruction themselves, but from the willingness to use such weapons against us. It is our enemy's eagerness to destroy us, and not the specific instrument by which such destruction is wrought, that should alarm us. As 9/11 should remind us, in the right hands, box-cutters can become weapons of mass destruction. In order to grasp the needed paradigm shift, consider, for a moment, what is probably the most convincing argument for believing that Saddam really had WMD's in the first place. If he didn't have such weapons, what motive could he possibly have for refusing to comply with the UN weapons inspectors? Why on earth, this argument goes, should Saddam put on such an elaborate charade in the first place, and one, moreover, that was fraught with immense danger in terms of the survival of his own regime? What sense can such behavior make? None to us; but a lot to him. Because, from Saddam's point of view, it was infinitely better for the Arab street to believe that he had such weapons than to permit them to discover the damning truth that he was, in the words of Chairman Mao, merely a paper tiger. What mattered for Saddam Hussein was his status in the collective fantasy of the Arab street, including the Arab street in Iraq, and in order to retain this status he was willing to risk attack by the U.S. And not without reason -- because the imagination of the Arab street was the ultimate foundation of his political power, much more so than the hit-or-miss torture that, at best, could only be used against select targets, and which therefore could not sustain wide-spread support for Saddam throughout the entirety of the Arab world. It was to retain this support that Saddam Hussein happily consented to play the role of a man who has something to hide. He wanted the world to believe he had something to hide precisely because he didn't have anything to hide; and because the revelation of the true state of his pathetically incompetent regime would destroy at a single stroke the laboriously accumulated glamour in which Saddam Hussein was accustomed to bask. This means that the paradigm shift that our collective mistake has nudged us toward, if we but recognize it, is a paradigm that acknowledges the profound and critical role that fantasy plays in determining the motivation of our enemy, and it indicates how badly we will go astray the moment we begin thinking that they think like us. They don't. And our failure to adjust to this fact is perhaps the greatest obstacle facing us today. http://www.techcentralstation.com/090903A.html Personally, I still think that they're buried in the desert somewhere, as that is what they had a proven track record of trying to do before - burying them in the desert - and the intel was just too overwhelming. But this argument - that they haven't been there for quite a while, and were just a big psyop conducted by Saddam to fool everybody - sure does throw some of the theories we've seen here regarding Bush's ill intentions into question. Even if they were never there, though, the "Bush lied" garbage is just that - garbage. Baseless, illogical, garbage. Interesting article / theory.
this part really doens't make sense to me... Why would a majority of Arabs see Saddam as a hero if WMD found? This article doesn't present enough of an argument for me to accept that assumption.
I don't know if he had them or not. But I do KNOW that Lil Kim has them, and Pakistan has them, and France has them, and India has them, and China has them, and we and the Brits have them. Iraq is a sad diversion from the war on terror. If we want to worry about WMD, let's worry about the nukes Pakistan HAS and those North Korea may have. Both are much greater threats of supplying WMD to terrorists than was Saddam.
I agree that Pakistan and NK are serious dangers where the WMD-terrorist nexus potential is involved. Although I'd have mentioned Iran ahead of both. But Iraq is the center of the war on terror. It is our 9/11, our ground zero, in the Islamic/Arabic world. We are going to throw a capitalist democracy right into their historical center, and hope it infects. If there is a better way to destroy Islamic fascism than infecting its target audience with democratic ideals, then I haven't heard it. Certainly no one who has opposed the Iraq war has presented any decent alternative. The only way to destroy our enemies in this current fight is to destroy their ideology. It is highly infectious in the Islamic world. Our only hope is to counter that infection with one of our own. No amount of words or bullets, no coalitions or councils, no wars or demonstrations will be capable of accomplishing victory. Only serious and fundamental social and political change in the Islamic/Arabic world will accomplish peace, and Iraq was/is the ideal first step in implementing that change. Side benefit: Instead of Al Qaeda attacking innocent civilians here, they are attacking (and generally getting their butts kicked by, although you won't hear that on the news) our army in an overseas country, far away from here. Since these people are heart-set on attacking us anyway, it is hard to not see the benefit in this. This will not accomplish the long-term goal of defeating Islamic fascism, but it will accomplish a very important short-term goal of limiting the damage that they are capable of inflicting against our home turf. The long-term goal of defeating Islamic fascism can only be accomplished by enacting - forcing, since they cannot seem to force it upon themselves - radical sociopolitical changes within their society. And entire ideology must be wiped out, because it is so anathemetical to peaceful existence. And that, unfortunately, requires kicking in the door at first.
That's some beautiful spin. Just beautiful. The smart thing for Bush to do is to destroy any WMDs we might find because we don't want to raise Saddam's standing on the Arab street. And then the two mistakes riff... classic. He is right in that it now appears the WMD issue has more to do with domestic politics. The reason those Bush naysayers are hitting him over the head with the politics of the WMD is because Bush was bashing them with the same club. Don't try to pull that "Dems politicized the war" crap when it started in this Whitehouse on the day the towers fell.
Just keep thinking it's all spin, rimrocker. Everything will continue to make sense to you in a conspiracy theory-type way... As I said, this theory was just something to think about. I do not ascribe to it - I still think they're there somewhere. But it does do quite a bit to rough up the logic of the "Bush lied" crowd's arguments. Nice job avoiding a discussion of that, BTW. And oh, don't sit here ant try to tell me that the Dems aren't politicizing this war. They are sparing no breath in an effort to do just that, at the nation's expense, too. Hell, no one would even know who Howard Dean was had he not based his campaign on politicizing this war.
I think Bush lied (or was lied to by his people and didn't have Clue 1) and I don't think this piece remotely rough's up my logic on that issue. This guy can write all he wants about mistakes, but the fact is none of theis was a mistake. There was a conscious decision somewhere to gin up and misrepresent facts so that an unnecessary war could be pursued. You accuse me of avoiding the discussion, but the author you posted does absolutely nothing to address the facts and politics that lead so many people to think the Bush administration was dishonest in it's linkage of Al Qaeda and Iraq, cynical in it's reliance upon 9/11 rhetoric, and politically motivated in it's distortion of intelligence information about WMDs.
The point I was making is that so many on the right want to say that Dems are the only one politicizing the war while the right and Bush are pure of heart when in reality this administration has looked at 9/11 and Iraq in almost purely political terms from the beginning. I never meant to imply that Dems aren't using the war issues to hammer Bush. That said, he's screwed it up so bad I think it's justified and appropriate.
Exactly what did he lie about? This is what you guys keep saying, but you never actually state what he lied about. Oh yeah, the Niger deal (even though he didn't actually lie about that). What else? If it wasn't a mistake, and it wasn't accurate (which we still don't know, BTW), then what was it? A lie? How? Please explain in detail, because I don't see any lies. Just a bunch of people saying "I think he lied", with nothing to back it up. There was a conscious decision by the BBC and other networks to claim that the intel and case were "sexed up", but the BBC has since come forth and said that their initial reporting on that "was not accurate" (in other words, it was the BBC who lied about it). I accuse you (and other democrats) of throwing out tart accusations with nothing to back them up. That is irresponsible, not to mention dishonest. Please explain to me exactly how he has politicized it? What I see is a President taking two bold and risky initiatives that are necessary to take if we are to win the war begun on (before, really) 9/11. He has been going against the political tides for months, and yet he is staying the course, because he realizes that to do otherwise would be to surrender in a war that we cannot afford to lose. I'm sure you do, and I expect nothing less from a Democrat at this point.
I accuse you of not paying attention. From a previous post: LIE #1: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." -- President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati. LIE #2: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." -- President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address. LIE #3: "We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." -- Vice President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on "Meet the Press." LIE #4: "[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." -- CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that evening's speech by President Bush. LIE #5: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." -- President Bush, Oct. 7. LIE #6: "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." -- President Bush, Oct. 7. LIE #7: "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." -- President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address. LIE #8: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council. LIE #9: "We know where [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press. LIE #10: "Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited." -- President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003.
We started a war without compelling evidence of WMDs while Bush said the opposite and in fact played it up so as to give the appearance that the WMDs were a direct and immediate threat to the US. Yeah, I think we do know it wasn't accurate. And more than the lies is the con behind them and the twisted way of misleading folks with half-truths. Many in this administration have a second career waiting for them on Bourbon Street. We've gone from invading a country with reconstituted nukes performing joint operations with Al-Qaeda to hoping we find unusable stuff buried in the desert and you can't see that this was a completely bogus operation from the get-go? You can't acknowledge that on 9/11 this administration started looking for ways to tie that horror to Iraq to give them the political power necessary to pursue their own desires? Here's two: Bush on Nov. 7, 2002: "He's a threat because he is dealing with al-Qaida." But hold on. Bush received intelligence that documented some contacts years earlier, but nothing that would lead one to believe a current or even a past partnership existed. Two days before the war: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess WMDs." But hold on. Intelligence officials now say that the document this charge was based on had many qualifiers and in no way supported such a definitive conclusion. There are others. Bush and his administration cooked the books on the intelligence side and overstated the case for war. A preemptive war. "The democratic processes ... are subverted when intelligence is manipulated to affect decisions by elected officials and the public." --The Tower Commission (Did a Republican really write that? Must have been when there were real Patriots in the party.) I accuse you (and other republicans--though not all) of being so blinded by ideology that you support people and policies who are systematically tearing down the foundations of our country, squandering a century (with a few minor bumps here and there) of good will across the globe, and creating a travesty that will take an unimaginable amount of blood and treasure to fix. Please. It's even starting to embarass some republicans. How many times was "terror" mentioned in the last speech? 24? I do agree that we can't afford to lose the war on terror. And you can continue to expect less from me, but I will always hope for more from you. By the way, this board is going to get really fun as the election nears.
Tree, What's this all about? ____________ Scripps Howard News Service September 11, 2003 American troops forced to buy own wartime gear By TARA COPP & JESSICA WEHRMAN Last Christmas, Mike Corcoran sent his mother an unusual Christmas list: He wanted night-vision goggles, a global positioning system and a short-wave radio. Corcoran, then a Marine sergeant in Afghanistan, wanted the goggles so he could see on patrols. They cost about $2,000 each. According to an Army internal report released earlier this summer, many ground troops like Corcoran decided to dip into their own pockets to get the equipment they needed to fight in Afghanistan and in Iraq. "There were a lot of reports of that prior to the war, people would go out and buy their own gear," said Patrick Garrett, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org. "The Army ran out of desert camo boots, and a lot of soldiers were being issued regular black combat boots. Soldiers decided that wasn't for them, so they paid for new boots with their own money." According to the Pentagon's "Operation Iraqi Freedom Lessons Learned" draft report, soldiers spent their own money to get better field radios, extra ammunition carriers to help them fight better and commercial backpacks because their own rucksacks were too small. Senior Airman Joe Harvey, based at McGuire AFB in New Jersey, said his clothing allowance is $200 a year from the Air Force, and that most aspects of the uniform, including four sets of combat and dress uniforms are provided. "But of course with all the wear and tear they don't always last that long," said Harvey, who deployed to Iraq for the war. "Now with some of the units if you rip a pair of bdu's (battle dress uniform) they will give you a new pair. But for the most part you are responsible for buying any new uniform you need except for boots. Your unit will always supply with a free pair of boots." Harvey said the costs stack up during promotions, when each airman has to purchase new stripes and get them tailored on. Corcoran, who has since left the Marines, purchased a bunch of items before he deployed. One necessity: baby wipes, because as he said, "a lot of the places you'll go, you won't be taking a shower." Corcoran also bought his own rucksack, and modified a sling for his M-16 so he was better prepared for patrols. He bought an electric shaver to remove stubble that would keep his gas mask from sealing correctly. Corcoran got all the items on his Christmas list, including the $2,000 goggles. The short wave radio was meant for entertainment, but he ended up hearing messages urging jihad, and he picked up intelligence from enemy fighters. And there is one item many soldiers purchased and carried into the desert that wasn't part of the regular equipment. "Another cool thing to bring with you is an American flag," Corcoran said. "Just in case you plan on conquering anything."
Great stuff, No Worries. Republicans jumped *all over* Clinton for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Where are they when a President lies about going to war? Oh, yeah. It's partisan if you do that.
Methinks that technically a pre-emptive war is an international war crime, which of course does rise above the High Crimes and Misdeanors bar since no sex was invloved. I am being very generous here about the description of the war. The Iraq War was really a preventive war, since no threat was imminent. We invaded Iraq because someday in the future they may seek to launch a terrorist attack against the USA. Even that level of speculation is open to question. As I have mentioned before in this very bb, methinks that historians will not look favorably on GWB.
No Worries: One word: Centrifuge. You never have addressed that one, and I'm still waiting. And oh, those aluminum tubes were dual-use items. The fact that they have other possible uses does not mean that they were not used for what we said they were. The only dishonesty regarding that one is the dishonest notion that they could not be used for uranium enrichment. Curiously, the Brits still stand by their analysis, possibly because we had other evidence that they may have been correct. And still, this statement does not constitute a lie. It states that the Brits believe something, which is a true statement. Do I need to explain exactly what a lie is to you? I actually remember that interview, and Cheney was talking about weapons programs, not weapons themselves (of course, this makes sense, since because Saddam never actually had any nuclear weapons, it would be impossible for him to 'reconstitute' them...) Another lie by you, since you are misrepresenting what was said. Yes, and evidence of that linkage has been found both in the rubble of their Intelligence HQ and by a Tennessee judge sifting through papers there. Curiously, the media has opted not to present these pieces of evidence for what they are - evidence that the admin was right about that. This is a reference to Ansar al-Islam. We turned out to be right about that connection, the poison-training included. Why did you post this one as an example of a lie? And we still haven't found the L-29s that we know for a fact existed. Another not-lie that you guys are harping as an example of dishonesty. And curiously, even if it does turn out that there were no such drones (and that is by no means certain at this point), all of the intelligence available indicated that they did. Even the Mossad believes that they did. So, even if they didn't exist, the admin was going on available intel. Is using faulty intel, when you don't know it's faulty, a lie in your book? If so, then we really do need to go over what a lie actually is. Well, as to their existence, to call that a lie is to claim that they were not there. If that is your position, I can only say that that is silly and premature... But we can discuss that if you wish. As for the "command and control arrangements", that is another case of intelligence being faulty. Again, shall we go over the requirements for something to be a lie? Aah, you must really, truly believe that Saddam had no WMD. I will just repeat that that is a silly and premature assumption to make, and one that has no evidence to support it - other than that the WMD have not been found yet. You're still taking the "I want egg on my face" argument... We knew where they were at one point - or at least thought that we did. Again, at best what you have here is faulty intelligence, which does not constitute a lie. You are referring to the trailers, I presume? Curiously, the CIA has not recanted their analysis, and stands by it. Why? No Worries, you seem to be absolutely sure that the WMD were never there, and that our use of 'faulty' intelligence regarding them constitutes a lie. If this is so, then in all fairness, you must also accuse every single intelligence agency, and every leader, of also "lying" about them. That includes France, Germany, Russia, China, etc. It also includes the UN as a body, since they claimed their belief in the WMD too. You must also include every Democratic contender on the stage today, since they all agreed prewar on those intel assessments. In short, if Bush lied, then everyone else on the planet who matters did too. Is that what you're saying? Because you can't have it both ways. rimrocker: See above for most of your points... For starters, I am not a Republican, although recent events have made it so that the likelihood of me voting for a Democrat has dwindled to zero. And it is not ideology that drives me, it is logical analysis, a refusal to blindly believe in the words of politicians (as you appear to with the Democratic hopefuls), a love of America and desire to protect and put its interests it above those of anyone else, and a hard-nosed view that the world is an unpleasant place where we are sometimes required to do unpleasant things - like go to war - to protect our own interests. Unlike you, I would not sit around and wait for mortal threats to our people and security arise. Unlike you I would not give the UN the benefit of the doubt and let them debate issues of national importance to us, especially considering their dismal past history in conflict resolution. Unlike you, I will not ignore predominant intelligence assessments and take a chance that a dictator does not possess WMD and would not ever pass them on to our enemies - the potential threat is too great to ignore to me. You don't understand me at all. If you agree that we cannot afford to lose it, then why do you fail to see its import? It was mentioned 24 times because it is important. And if you do not want to see us lose it, then you must not be a very good strategiser. The strategy we have taken is not that hard to comprehend, and is the only one offered up so far that appears to have a reasonable expectation of success. Why have you and your ilk offered no alternatives, if we are not doing it right? On the question of troops buying their own gear: This story is true. It also pisses me off, especially since I have had to buy thousands of dollars of gear at my own expense. The stuff that we are issued is for the most part crap. The IBA (the vest you see everyone wearing) is top of the line, the NODs (night vision) are great - don't know why this guy bought those - the weapons are great, the vehicles are good, etc, but the DoD and Congress fail to understand that the little things like rucksacks, boots, and assault vests matter, too. I have a full set of top-of-the-line gear ready for when I get the call, as do many other soldiers, but I have paid out the ass for it out of my own pocket, and that is shameful. I think the problem here is that when commanders send their lists up and Congress OKs them, somewhere in the pipeline they just forget about these smaller items. They just think about the tanks, airc4raft, rifles, etc and forget what the guy in the field is actually wearing and using to survive. It pisses me off, and I don't know how to fix it, other than continue to bring it to everyone's awareness who will listen.
Just to clear this up before you respond: Main Entry: 3lie Function: verb Inflected Form(s): lied; ly·ing /'lI-i[ng]/ Etymology: Middle English, from Old English lEogan; akin to Old High German liogan to lie, Old Church Slavonic lugati Date: before 12th century intransitive senses 1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive 2 : to create a false or misleading impression transitive senses : to bring about by telling lies <lied his way out of trouble> synonyms LIE, PREVARICATE, EQUIVOCATE, PALTER, FIB mean to tell an untruth. LIE is the blunt term, imputing dishonesty <lied about where he had been>. PREVARICATE softens the bluntness of LIE by implying quibbling or confusing the issue <during the hearings the witness did his best to prevaricate>. EQUIVOCATE implies using words having more than one sense so as to seem to say one thing but intend another <equivocated endlessly in an attempt to mislead her inquisitors>. PALTER implies making unreliable statements of fact or intention or insincere promises <a swindler paltering with his investors>. FIB applies to a telling of a trivial untruth <fibbed about the price of the new suit>. At best, Bush paltered...
Treeman, great post. I disagree with your conclusions, but you addressed every point in a reasonably objective manner. Nice job. But Bush and his entire administration lied about the weapons of mass destruction. We can nit-pick the finer details of what was said and extract kernels of truths from the inferrence, but the overall representation of what was said was this: "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and will use them against us very soon." Like I said, I respect your thoughts on the issue and admire your research, but I strongly disagree.
Sorry, been away a little while, please allow me to cut in; Centrifuge. At most that proves that at one time there was an effort within Iraq to seek nuclear power. We already knew that, hence the word 'reconstituted'. It in no way backs up the quoted claim NW stated. Aluminum tubes. Sorry, tree, but you are going about this bass-ackwards; the tubes were used as evidence to support the claim, hence the onus is on those using it as such. If there are alternate explanations for the tubes, especially ones which have been as backed up as these have, then not telling people that this alternate explanation existed was dishonest. It would be akin to getting a warrant to search a building on the grounds that you have information that there were narcotics inside which showed that illegal drug dealers were using the place as a drop, and failing to point out that the narcotics in question is codeine and that the place was a pharmacy. You conveniently look at this without taking into account who brought up the tubes, and in what context. Curiously we had information at the time discrediting the Brit report...which the Brits hadn't seen...and failed to inform the public of same. And the same Brits standing by their comments are the ones up to their ears in investigations by their own people, and were they to back down now they'd likely have to step down as well. All Blair can do is hold for dear life and and hope that something is found, or spin paperwork into WMDs. Moreover there were inter-departmental arguments about this specific claim with the clear intent of getting the statement into the SOTUA, while knowing it was based on suspect intel, with the desired effect of the country believing, based on it, that the Iraqis had nukes, or were about to get them. This would fall at least under the second of your definitions, as liststed: "1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive 2 : to create a false or misleading impression." You owe NW an apology, here, tree, as this was fully hashed out while you were away, complete with a full transcript from the braoadcast in question, and the statement was made exactly as NW reported, with no correction, retraction, or clarification. It is true that at other times in the interview he did discuss programs, but he said this quote by itself, and it was never corrected if, as you claim, it was meant to only be about programs. At best it was a pretty huge mistake...and one which was never corrected...which had the exact same desired effect of all the other 'mistakes, etc.' that Bush and co. made in this matter; to wit, leading the American people, and those of the world, to believe that Saddam Hussein either had or was on the verge of having nukes. NW did not lie, and you may not have lied, but you at least made a mistake when you so stated. I cannot comment on these finds you are citing; I know little if anything about them, and have certainly not heard them discussed as evidence, as you maintain. Forgive me for being skeptical re: your claims of things which are evidence, but history shows you occassionally play fast and loose with things which have been 'proven'. That said, they are irrelevent to the claims made by the President, unless they A) prove of an active link going back, if not a decade, at least before the war. and B) Is the same evidence that Bush said the CIA had at the time he made the speech. You see, that's the problem; the proof he said he had contradicts the NIE report, which claimed, as you well know, that Saddam had adopted a position of not getting involved in terrorists who were opposed to the US, for his own best interests. So how Bush claimed to have proof of the opposite of what his intelligence believed, and cited the very same intelligence as his source, would sort of make one wonder about his, errr...veracity. Were he to now find new 'proof', and somehow claim that this proves he knew back then, without revealing what prrof he seemed to miraculously have then without benefit of his intelligence organs would not prove that this was not a lie. Again, you are shifting the burden of proof. If I claim to the American people that Canada is developing a nuclear moose to send into the US to kill everyone, and we invade on that pretext, and no mooses are found, I cannot go around saying that, until we find the nuclear moose I remain unchallenged; it is my burden of proof to support my claims. Not only have these claims not been verified, but they have been abandoned; I have seen Cheney and Wolfowitz admit they were incorrect....ie another convenient 'mistake'...or... I wanted to repeat the exact quote here, to fully respond to your response. "Quote: LIE #7: "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." -- President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address. " I don't get your response to this one...in order for the quote to be valid it must be assumed that they were there at the time in question, which has not been proven at all. You again are demanding disproof before you admit a position is wrong, a specious argument. And, no, to call this a lie we do not need to only prove they were not there...we could start by proving that they were not 'weaponized'. a term which both you and I fully understand; activated; ready for deployment. Moreoever we'd only need to show that their command and control structure did not exist; for which we haven't seen a shred of verification despite the many POWs of rank, etc. Oh...wait...you're citing faulty intel...again...hmmm..another convenient mistake which lead us to what conclusion, exactly? Isn't it odd that all of our faulty intel, mistakes, etc. all seem to be made in the same direction, with the same result, a result which, coincidentaly I'm sure, gave the audience in question exactly the impression Bush wanted them to have. And all the reports pre-war that the administration was only looking for intel which supported their claims couldn't possibly be relevent here, I suppose? Again, the direct quote you are responding to... " Quote: LIE #8: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council. " So, no, tree, no one need believe that Saddam had no WMD to counter the claim that he had hundreds of tons of the stuff. There are, as I'm sure you're aware, plenty of options between the two. ( No WMDs at all, hundreds of tons.) Are you still confident that the amounts Powell said here will be unearthed? And how long will this 'not yet' argument go on? Serious question; when will you , if the hundreds of tons of w.g. chems are not discovered, admit this was a lie...lol..or more bad intel in the same direction? Well, let's look at this... We know where they are in March, we presumably have sats on full rotation for a 24/7 coverage of same, or else we're criminally irresponsible, in that we are talking about 'hundreds of tons ' of WMDs here, and we have their location. Additionally it would be assumed that we have live ops on site. Yet somehow, between March and the invasion, under fulltime observation, the Iraqis managed to move hundreds of tons of exactly what we know they have from exactly where we know they have them to a place we have been unable to discover with months fo full access and high level POWs? An almost incredible feat, wouldn't you say? Or, there is another possibility...isn't there? Just maybe? Oh...more faulty intel...in the same direction...you'd think just once tey'd err on the other side, no? I mean if these were unbiased honest mistakes, that is... Again with the ' not wrong until disproven.' argument, who cares what the senior analysts have said. Let me ask you this, tree...in this post you have already stated, in the White House's defense, at least 4 examples of faulty intel...how many of those have been discalimed by the intel sources? I mean, if that's S.O.P., and if short of that we should assume validity, where were the intel admissions of error on all thses? Or is it possible...just possible...that intel sources don't always hold press conferences to outline their mistakes...if they were theirs?
FWIW, That "rubble of the HQ" documents fable comes from the same right wing tabloid, the London Telegraph who found the documents linking British MP Galloway to Saddam, The CSM ran the story and ended up having to apologize because the documents they used were faked. Since then no reputable source has run with this rumor, or cited these dubious documents, not even Fox News or the Bush Administration for obvious reasons. C'mon treeman, you think the Bush Admin really have a smoking gun that's been lying around since april that they haven't bothered to use? Why don't they say, here's the documents, right here, that a british guy found in April, that proves it! Either that's true and they are sitting on it, or the documents are fakes. Since they come from a bunch of fakers, I'm going to believe the latter. EDIT: here's the BBC's story on those documents, it's an even cruder forgery than I thought, apparently Bin Laden's name is located on some "erasure" Apparently the Iraqis were unable to destroy the documents, but had time to use liquid paper instead :
