Cheney Asserts Connection Between Al Qaeda and Iraq, still

Wow. I was going to wait till next week when the transcript was released, but this is now suddenly very topical.

Frontline did a special tonight on the WMD search, the people involved, interviewing Kay, Blix, all kinds of scientists, etc., and were all over Iraq, including being the first media team allowed to travel around with the WMD search team.

Among the highlights of the show, which was pretty damning, about the WMD hunt, ect.:


* the person put in charge of the search for the WMDs in Iraq post war was also among the biggest proponents of invading Iraq pre-war on the basis of his belief that Iraq had WMDs, Kay. The conflict of interest aside, Kay's search has proven so fruitless, and he has altered his terminology so many times ( from WMDs, to WMD programs, to evidence of WMDs, to evidence of the capacity for WMD programs, to violations of UN 1441) that Frontline has said that he is about to be replaced...by a man who says he believes it is unlikely that WMDs will ever be found in Iraq.

Among the largest black marks on kay's record were his initial statements about the very trailers Cheney is now citing, which were initially said to be WMD related, but which were later subjected to " exhaustive tests" without any connection with biological materials found. Kay himself admits that his statemtns were " premature and embarrassing", and wishes he'd never said them.

* The course of the WMD hunt went like this:

Before Bush takes power, the administration says it is almost impossible for Saddam Hussein to have developed WMDs...in fact they showed Powell on air saying as much. All the scientific research of the time corraborates this claim. the UN inspectors have ruled out any new programs, and the only as yet unaccounted for materials from what had existed at the end of the first Gulf War are minor, and as Hans Blix says, " quite likely accounted for in exactly the manner the Iraqis claimed; destroyed. Blix says that he did say that there were unaccounted for materials, but stressed that that should not be read to mean that they still existed.

After Bush takes control, there is an immediate ( pre-9-11) emphasis placed on Iraq ( one official called it turning the heat from simmer to high) and everything is looked at in a new light. Blixx's claims of unaccounted for materials is emphasised, while his qualifier is ignored, to the point where Blix says that it was an entirely political shift. After 9-11, more and more the intel and scientific data coming in is refuting the idea that Saddam has developped any WMDs at all, and yet more and more the statents being made to the public directly contradict this. The Director of the scientific institue responsible for assessing biological and nuclear weapons hazards said that he had no other interpretation at the time except that the administration had decided that it wanted to go to war, and that WMDs were the selling point. The former director of nuclear weapons intel says that it was a clear case of politics overriding science and intelligence.

This direct contradiction in what was known and what was being said continues up to the war. They cited examples like the tubes, the uranium, and other gaffes as examples of the White House desperation for anything to give to the public to support it's cause. Since the war the program cted over 30 false WMD finds originally cited and later proven false. At this point the most they have found is an old chemical mixer which should have been listed under 1441, but tests revealed that it had not been used for biological weapons development.

*There has been a couple of interesting finds in terms of planning; An engineer revealed that he and others were told to develop plans for a missile with a range of 1000 km, while the UN treaty limited Iraq to a range of 250 km. But it is unknown if this was ever meant to be implimented, or if this was merely preparing for the day the UN lifted it's conditions. It is known that the plans were never put into any kind of practical stage. And there are some reports that a couple of vials which may have included anthrax were originally sent to a scientist's home, but dissappeared later, but there is no corroboration, and it is unknown if they were destroyed, or even if they werw what US informants have told officials.

*What almost everyone in Iraq, including Kay, who was the original gung-ho Irq has WMDs! advocate, are now admitting is that it has become virtually a certainty that they won;t find any substantial cahes of weapons, and the kinds of numbers the administration were citing pre-war have been ruled out altogether. Few people are even talking about finding programs anymore. The most people are hoping to find now is a paper trail ( there are extensive documents) about plans to enact some kind of WMD program at some point in the future. Blix agrees that this is possible, but says it might be plans for a post UN-limited Iraq. Besides, plans are not outlawed by the treaty.


I will post a more complete and specific thread on this in a week, but given Cheney's ridiculous claims today, this preview seemed appropriate.

 

Yes, but did Frontline mention the fact that 9/11 means we can do anything related to or unrelated to terrorism now?

After all we were attacked, so we don't need to fully analyze intel, be thorough when going over intel or rationale for war.

 

Given what we now know, given that he is citing already discredited evidence, there are only three possible conclusions for this increible statement:

1) He is getting pretty desperate.

2) He is aware of the large number of people willing to swallow anything, no matter how obviously false rather than admit either A) the US was wrong and everyone else was right, or B) The Republican President was wrong.

3) Or he actually believes that, no matter what the facts show, he is right...this is actually probably the scariest of the three.

As for myself, I suspect it's 2.

 

Give him some credit. No way it's 3 and it's not 1 either because 2. We see it here on this board all the time. It's even worse among people who don't read these kinds of boards.

 

Go Go Haliburton!!!

 

Don't get us started on 9/11. 9/11 justified everything in this administration's eyes. And this administration is making sure that 9/11 doesn't get scrutinized.

 

I'd asume 2 as well, but the zealotry in the current administration does allow for a glimmer of a chance that it's 3. I didn't think 1 applied either, unles as a " Well, guys, it's about time we went out and shovelled some more. Some people are forgetting what to think."

 

is this document the one where saddam warns his followers not to associate with foreign terrorist elements entering iraq for jihad?? or is it something else?