The problem is that Arabs/Muslims said WMD was a pretext and that the US had ulterior motives for war, ie settling old scores, a military foothold in the region, influencing the politics of the region, safeguarding oil, flexing it's military might. They were all proven to be correct. Now every pre-Iraq war moderate has good reason to fall in line with the radicals who were saying these things for years. We're doing whatever we want, making up whatever reasons we want, and then will say after the fact that we were just saying what we needed to say to get away with doing it. This is very dangerous business.
<b>BatmanJones</b>: Isn't the truth of the matter that the Bush Administration emphasized .... not that it "lied" or perpetrated a "sham?" The world knew we were strong; they thought politically we wouldn't have the courage to say "enough is enough" and go in and start fixing the problem. I don't find liberation as less palatable. It doesn't appear tht the Iraqui people do either. How many Shi-ites marched for the firs time in some 30 years? Saddam, de facto, is an enemy of the US.. I don't feel misled. My recollection is that Iraqi liberation was always part of the conversation-- a big part. <b>Timing</b>: Americans said that as well. Do you mean "pretense" or "pretext?" There is an over-abundance of evidence that Saddam was up to no good. We've not yet found the smoking "fuse" that we would like to find but it ain't over. It is very dangerous business. Isn't that why we are there?
Well the Bush administration did lie in reference to Iraq and it's nuclear capability early on. This isn't lying just a little dishonesty. The Bush administration wasn't honest with the people or the congress. When asking Congress for a resolution they should have said that the reason was because they wanted show the people who was boss, and flex our muscle.
Who cares? We accomplished our main mission: relieving Saddam of his power. What do you want us to do now? Let him have control again?
Lie? Please substantiate. If their intel is not accurate or the extrapolation of their intel is not accurate , then is that the lie of which you speak?
Ok...Let's deal with this, because it has been an ongoing issue. There have been repeated examples of the US, possessors of the greatest intelligence agencies in the world, citing what turned out to be erroneous intelligence re: this situation. There are a couple of issue surrounding this. 1) If, in fact, these were all honest mistakes...if you make that assumption, then why were all the mistakes in one direction? Why were all the 'innaccuracies' pointing to exactly what the administration wanted to hear? Coincidence? 2) They are justifying this war, not on direct attacks from other nations, but on their perception that another nation represents some sort of hidden threat to the US. What is the means by which they perceive this threat? Intelligence. If their intelligence is unreliable, their ability to evaluate it so faulty that they repeatedly accept faulty intel that others can see through in a very short time after the US had it for months, etc. then how in God's name can we justify this war based on our supposed possession of intelligence that no one else has!?!?!? So in the end, whether you think the US has been lying, or merely repeatedly and conveniently incompetent, the tangible effect this has on our ability to justify this war on intelligence is the same.
Memo to rimrocker and Timing: We are sorry that your side lost the Coalition vs. Saddam war. Please do your best to accept defeat and support America. Please stop propagating lies in an effort to tarnish the overwhelming successes that an Administration that you hate has achieved. Regards, American Citizens and Soldiers
You forgot to direct that at ABC News, that bastion of US hatred, and other anti-Americans like former director of the CIA Woolsey....I am not mentioning the unnamed Admin sources because I don't give much direct credit to any unnamed source, but are you actually saying that ABC and Woolsey are taking sides here out of hatred, or that rim was wrong to post this?
The thing I don't get around here is that we all saw the same evidence. We all saw each of the evidi discredited. and we each saw that happen time and time again. How is it that we all could not come to same conclusion. And most of noticed that the media was being used to light a story and then when the truth came out forget about it. If you ask me the evidence was heavily in favor no weapons of mass destruction. I don't see how some of us could have looked the other way when presented with the facts. and most of the world agreed that notihng had presented in the way of WMD. So how is it that some people still did not get it. It would have been interesting to be in the jurors room with this as the case study. Keep in mind, this has nothing to do with right or wrong. I still think it was right to liberate the people. I just find it hard to believe we could not get people to agree on the WMD.
The article posted is basically a transcript of the Nightline report I saw (and to which I made reference) last week.
P.S. I don't know the validity of this, but an MD in DC has a television show dedicated to the gulf war syndrome. He's pretty sure he's narrowed the syndrome down to a U.S. weapon that has been banned in several countries. I forget what it was though. looked like a large bullet with blades and stuff. Some how it irradiates something. Anyway, I thought that was interesting.
<b>MacB</b>: The errors running in the other direction were just overlooked or dismissed or ignored. That could be why we have not found more evidence we seek .... yet. Saddam had 3 months to cram a decade of work into. I can only think of a couple of examples where the US seems to have blown it badlly. I'm sure their intel files on Iraq are as thick as the California phone books stacked one on top of the other. Are you really calling the US incompetent?
I think the U.S. knew exactly what it was doing. But I also think that after a few months they started to believe their own bull puck. As George Contanza said, it isn't a lie if you believe it. So in my opinion, which nobody asked for , the U.S. knew it had bad evidence but still thought the world would believe them. Ironically, the majority of the world did not. But the publicity was just enough to validate it. Tony Blair is left with a bunch of pissed off countrymen. He's the one who really gets screwed on this.
So is it sham that we are still looking for WMD's in Iraq? That depends on what your definition of "is" is...
Well remember initially Bush did not want to go to the UN. He planned to present his case to the American people, and they have been clearly in support, on the basis of the war on terrorism, of removing Saddam Hussein. The American people, I believe, would have supported this war even if WMD would have had less emphasis, and more emphasis put on fighting terror and democratizing the region. That's why he "got away" with it. But, "the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans." In other words, the reason he emphasized WMD was to build an international coalition so that the US wouldn't be "going it alone." This is something a lot of critics supported, right? The fact that he used a secondary reason, using existing UN resolutions, to build a stronger case, I am not so sure is as scandalous as is being treated here. Unfortunately, the fact that he had to present 2 different cases, one the American people would support, and a different one to the UN just shows how the interests of the UN and the United States have diverged. Sadly, now the US may take a credibility hit because of wasting it's time (IMO) trying to build a coaltion among the unwilling. Also, I think the administration is serious about democratizing Iraq. The neoncons have been in support of a true democratization in the region for a while, and were appalled when Bush I abandoned opposition forces after Gulf I.
Mr. Clutch The problem is with the "two cases" theory is that Bush has also misled the American people about Saddam's complicity in 9/11. We have found only minor evidence that Saddam ever interacted with Bin Laden/Al-Qaida, yet a significant number of Americans still believe that the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqi (which they weren't). Granted, we know that Saddam was supporting Palestinian suicide bombers, but those groups do not pose an imminent threat to the United States. However, Bush used the sentiment from 9/11 and American confusion of totalitarianism and terrorism to build support for a "preemptive" war. The capper was supposed to be the danger of Iraqi WMD, but this article now shows that even the administration didn't take that danger very seriously. Worse, it has used the war as a smokescreen for its very controversial domestic policies (tax cuts, Patriot act). So this admission really makes me angry. I'm definitely glad that things worked out in Iraq and that Saddam is no longer oppressing the Iraqi people. But I don't like seeing this kind of political misdirection by this or any administration.
MC...I see a few problems with your reasoning. 1) The support was not, as you claim, a given from the beginning. In fact, if you look back, significantly less then 1/2 the population thought there was any connection between Iraq and 9-11 to begin with. Less than half supported war until the WMD argument began. The campaign of flooding the public with reasons for war garnered support, but to say that the public would have supported the war with a different emphasis is as best speculation, and at worst revisionist history. Either way, if the White House believed it had to, er, stress an emphasis it didn't believe in, clearly they themselves thought they needed it to sell the war to the US people, no? 2) The quote you give itself includes domestic as well as foreign emphasis. Therefore it cannot be concluded, at least not from that quote, that the WMD argument was for foreign consuption alone, or especially. 3) Your WMD was for coalition alone...coalition was only needed because UN US interests are so opposite...inference it was right thing for US to do even if it was wrong for everyone else argument is specious. Firstly, as stated above, the premise that WMD was only an add on for the foreigners is speculative and not supported by any evidence, including that used here. Secondly, to say that we misrepresented the priorities of the US in some valiant but ultimately doomed attempt to assuage unrealisitc international expectations is to do two things; to shift responsibility away from a primary argument for the war coming up empty ( by virtue of speculating that it was only for UN, or that once bought into at home, argument for war abroad is really only window dressing)...and to completely avoid a key point re: international community and this war. The majority of the rest of the world has consistently said that our justification for the war has been unproven, and questioned our representation of arguements for the war. The US repeatedly and vehemently denied the accuracy of this, and repeatedly emphasised the WMD aspect, as well as other unproven aspects like 9-11. The world continued to not buy it even as we did. Now if this report is true, which perspective on our argument for the war appears to have been more accurate, the one which said we were acting in good faith, and presenting genuine and sincere arguments for the war, or the the one which questioned our intelligence reports, our representation of events, and our sincerity?
If this report is true (wich i feared for some time) than i really think we (the world) have a problem, if bush attacks just to show how strong he is, maybe the next country he wil attack is a european country, who knows. one more thing, some reactions here have really shocked me. i didn't know some people actually support hte fact that the US would attack just to show it's muscles.
