Sorry I didn't put the source... that was bad of me. I can't recall of the top of my head... I'll look it up this afternoon.
sorry, for some reason i thought you lived in colorado...i "fond" memories of twisting my knee and being brought in by the ski-patrol on Sandia Peak as a pre-teen.
rim, i'm about a third of the way through, but so far several things are apparent in your timeline. I don't want this to turn into a "bash-the-source" post, but the majority of the sources you cite are of questionalble objectivity (the new republic, bushwatch, etc.). Second, the sources repeat many claims as since being "proved false," when in fact the reverse is true, or at the very least the jury's still out., for example the atta in florida story when he was said to be in the Czech republic. this has not proved to be false. including scott ritter's charges further weakens your arguement as the man has about a tenth of the believability of paul o'neill, and that's not saying much. That said, i'll admit that there's sufficient "noise" around this issue to allow one the paint a negative portrait of the admin's motives if one were so disposed. for me the fundamental question is do you trust the people who've been elected to lead the country. in my case, and it's just one man's opinion, i have no reason not to. in each of the watershed events that have shaped this nations politics over the past 3 years (florida, 9/11, the Iraq war) i've been impressed with Bush's forthrightness and resolve, and dismayed by the actions of most of his critics. your mileage may vary. so he gets the benefit of the doubt on this issue simply because, however i might feel about his stance on a particular issue, i believe at heart he is a fundamentally honest man. i feel the same about Cheney, Rummsfeld, Powell, and Rice. i leave open the possibility of revising my opinion of them at some point in the future, but that may have to wait for the T-R-A-N-S-C-R-I-P-T-S.
Yeah, I actually checked some of the links, and they seem to all be references and links to news articles... for example, when Buzzflash is cited, it's a link on Buzzflash to a story, not an opinion piece by Buzzflash. I also thought the question was about whether there were questions about the intelligence before the declaration/invasion and I think this definitely shows that there were.
what i read is people extrapolating current doubts about the itelligence to mesh w/ their prewar opposition. in any case, clearly Thielmann had doubts prewar and presumably he voiced them internally. The point Macbeth was making was that questions about the intelligence were the main thrust of the prewar opposition, not whether such doubts existed at all. my recollection of the protests was "no blood for oil," and other such claims, imperialism, etc. but i'll concede the point that doubts existed.
1) rimmy...thanks a bunch. Literally. 2) basso...what I said was that it was the main thrust of the anti-war argument, not that it was the main chanting refrain. "No blodd due to selective intel!" doesn;t exactly have the same sexy ring to it, does it. And, reduce the argument, and they're essentially the same. Think about it... We know we're puching hard for war in Iraq...we learn we're not taking the intel as it comes, but rather asking for intel which fits our argument. Furthermore, we learn that the WH has established a brand new Intel division specifically to find intel re: Iraq which supports either the WMD or 9-11 contention as Bush et al were dissatisfied with what they were getting. We hear of several intel/diplomatic officials voicing grave concerns about this, some even resigning as a result ( btw, although rim's finds quote some, there were several more)... ...and, at the end of the day, what's an objective or anti-Bush/Republican/conservative etc. person likely to conclude is the motivation for the administration's dire need for this war? If our intel is saying Iraq's no threat, if we can;t find any connection to 9-11, of we Do know of other nations where the same can't be said who are being ognored...what would you conclude about the administration's motives for this war? IF you are already a hrd line supporter, or IF you don;t want to admit that the US was the bad guy in this time of heightened national awareness, you;d have to assume the real motive lies among the less appealling of the alternatives, in a similar fashion to what a jury should think about a witness already caught lying...yeah, sure, you can excuse the previous manipulation and still assume the ultimate, hidden agenda is a positive one, but that's the less rational/objective way to go. Usually when people are caught lying, manipulating, and misleading, their credibility comes into question thereafter, in particular as it applies to the very area about which they were initially deceptive. As such, 'oil' is a logical motive to ascribe, for lack of more reasonable alternatives. I'm not saying 'oil' was it, but given the administration's track record with being straight with us, especially when it comes to getting us into a war, I'd be more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to those who err on the side of disbelieving Bush et al than the reverse. So you can, if you chose, continue to 'put your faith' in the administration. But as the saying goes, fool me once, shame on me...and we're way past seconds here.
Disabuse yourself of any notion that Powell has any qualities besides fealty. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/02/04/MNGNN4OI751.DTL . . . Washington -- The White House and Secretary of State Colin Powell scrambled on Tuesday to present a united front about the war in Iraq, a day after Powell said he was not sure whether he would have recommended an invasion had he known that Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of banned weapons. After telling the Washington Post in an interview on Monday that the absence of weapons stockpiles "changes the political calculus" about whether to go to war, Powell told reporters on Tuesday, in comments coordinated with the White House, that "the bottom line is this: The president made the right decision." . . .
Combine Rimrockers info with the fact that The administration knew that the intel was negative with regards towards Iraq and WMD. Some of these are the same infor posted from Rimrocker's research. But if it makes a difference to Basso almost all of these come from news agencies and networks and newspapers as well as reports from the IAEA and other relevant agencies. Sorry if people have already read this when I posted it before, but I thought it was relevant to the discussion at hand here. http://www.americanprogress.org/sit...JRJ8OVF&b=24889 Neglecting Intelligence, Ignoring Warnings A chronology of how the Bush Administration repeatedly and deliberately refused to listen to intelligence agencies that said its case for war was weak January 28, 2004 Updated January 29, 2004 Download: DOC, PDF, RTF Former weapons inspector David Kay now says Iraq probably did not have WMD before the war, a major blow to the Bush Administration which used the WMD argument as the rationale for war. Unfortunately, Kay and the Administration are now attempting to shift the blame for misleading America onto the intelligence community. But a review of the facts shows the intelligence community repeatedly warned the Bush Administration about the weakness of its case, but was circumvented, overruled, and ignored. The following is year-by-year timeline of those warnings. 2001: WH Admits Iraq Contained; Creates Agency to Circumvent Intel Agencies In 2001 and before, intelligence agencies noted that Saddam Hussein was effectively contained after the Gulf War. In fact, former weapons inspector David Kay now admits that the previous policy of containment – including the 1998 bombing of Iraq – destroyed any remaining infrastructure of potential WMD programs. OCTOBER 8, 1997 – IAEA SAYS IRAQ FREE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: "As reported in detail in the progress report dated 8 October 1997…and based on all credible information available to date, the IAEA's verification activities in Iraq, have resulted in the evolution of a technically coherent picture of Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme. These verification activities have revealed no indications that Iraq had achieved its programme objective of producing nuclear weapons or that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapon-usable nuclear material or had clandestinely acquired such material. Furthermore, there are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for t he production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance." [Source: IAEA Report, 10/8/98] FEBRUARY 23 & 24, 2001 – COLIN POWELL SAYS IRAQ IS CONTAINED: "I think we ought to declare [the containment policy] a success. We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." He added Saddam "is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors" and that "he threatens not the United States." [Source: State Department, 2/23/01 and 2/24/01] SEPTEMBER 16, 2001 – CHENEY ACKNOWLEDGES IRAQ IS CONTAINED: Vice President Dick Cheney said that "Saddam Hussein is bottled up" – a confirmation of the intelligence he had received. [Source: Meet the Press, 9/16/2001] SEPTEMBER 2001 – WHITE HOUSE CREATES OFFICE TO CIRCUMVENT INTEL AGENCIES: The Pentagon creates the Office of Special Plans "in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true-that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States…The rising influence of the Office of Special Plans was accompanied by a decline in the influence of the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. bringing about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community." The office, hand-picked by the Administration, specifically "cherry-picked intelligence that supported its pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest" while officials deliberately "bypassed the government's customary procedures for vetting intelligence." [Sources: New Yorker, 5/12/03; Atlantic Monthly, 1/04; New Yorker, 10/20/03] 2002: Intel Agencies Repeatedly Warn White House of Its Weak WMD Case Throughout 2002, the CIA, DIA, Department of Energy and United Nations all warned the Bush Administration that its selective use of intelligence was painting a weak WMD case. Those warnings were repeatedly ignored. JANUARY, 2002 – TENET DOES NOT MENTION IRAQ IN NUCLEAR THREAT REPORT: "In CIA Director George Tenet's January 2002 review of global weapons-technology proliferation, he did not even mention a nuclear threat from Iraq, though he did warn of one from North Korea." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03] FEBRUARY 6, 2002 – CIA SAYS IRAQ HAS NO WMD, AND HAS NOT PROVIDED AL QAEDA WMD: "The Central Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is also convinced that President Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda or related terrorist groups, according to several American intelligence officials." [Source: NY Times, 2/6/02] APRIL 15, 2002 – WOLFOWITZ ANGERED AT CIA FOR NOT UNDERMINING U.N. REPORT: After receiving a CIA report that concluded that Hans Blix had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear power plants "fully within the parameters he could operate" when Blix was head of the international agency responsible for these inspections prior to the Gulf War, a report indicated that "Wolfowitz ‘hit the ceiling’ because the CIA failed to provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program." [Source: W. Post, 4/15/02] SUMMER, 2002 – CIA WARNINGS TO WHITE HOUSE EXPOSED: "In the late summer of 2002, Sen. Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same cautious assessments. But committee members became worried when, midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned skepticism to footnotes." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03] SEPTEMBER, 2002 – DIA TELLS WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS: "An unclassified excerpt of a 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency study on Iraq's chemical warfare program in which it stated that there is ‘no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.’" The report also said, "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions." [Source: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 6/13/03; DIA report, 2002] SEPTEMBER 20, 2002 – DEPT. OF ENERGY TELLS WHITE HOUSE OF NUKE DOUBTS: "Doubts about the quality of some of the evidence that the United States is using to make its case that Iraq is trying to build a nuclear bomb emerged Thursday. While National Security Adviser Condi Rice stated on 9/8 that imported aluminum tubes ‘are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs’ a growing number of experts say that the administration has not presented convincing evidence that the tubes were intended for use in uranium enrichment rather than for artillery rocket tubes or other uses. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright said he found significant disagreement among scientists within the Department of Energy and other agencies about the certainty of the evidence." [Source: UPI, 9/20/02] OCTOBER 2002 – CIA DIRECTLY WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa." [Source: Washington Post, 7/23/03] OCTOBER 2002 — STATE DEPT. WARNS WHITE HOUSE ON NUKE CHARGES: The State Department’s Intelligence and Research Department dissented from the conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. "The activities we have detected do not ... add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons." INR accepted the judgment by Energy Department technical experts that aluminum tubes Iraq was seeking to acquire, which was the central basis for the conclusion that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, were ill-suited to build centrifuges for enriching uranium. [Source, Declassified Iraq NIE released 7/2003] OCTOBER 2002 – AIR FORCE WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The government organization most knowledgeable about the United States' UAV program -- the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center -- had sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons" – a WMD claim President Bush used in his October 7 speech on Iraqi WMD, just three days before the congressional vote authorizing the president to use force. [Source: Washington Post, 9/26/03] 2003: WH Pressures Intel Agencies to Conform; Ignores More Warnings Instead of listening to the repeated warnings from the intelligence community, intelligence officials say the White House instead pressured them to conform their reports to fit a pre-determined policy. Meanwhile, more evidence from international institutions poured in that the White House’s claims were not well-grounded. LATE 2002-EARLY 2003 – CHENEY PRESSURES CIA TO CHANGE INTELLIGENCE: "Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual, face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the administration's claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several other intelligence veterans interviewed." Additionally, CIA officials "charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department and vice president's office had 'pressured' agency analysts to paint a dire picture of Saddam's capabilities and intentions." [Sources: Dallas Morning News, 7/28/03; Newsweek, 7/28/03] JANUARY, 2003 – STATE DEPT. INTEL BUREAU REITERATE WARNING TO POWELL: "The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the State Department's in-house analysis unit, and nuclear experts at the Department of Energy are understood to have explicitly warned Secretary of State Colin Powell during the preparation of his speech that the evidence was questionable. The Bureau reiterated to Mr. Powell during the preparation of his February speech that its analysts were not persuaded that the aluminum tubes the Administration was citing could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium." [Source: Financial Times, 7/30/03] FEBRUARY 14, 2003 – UN WARNS WHITE HOUSE THAT NO WMD HAVE BEEN FOUND: "In their third progress report since U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 was passed in November, inspectors told the council they had not found any weapons of mass destruction." Weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council they had been unable to find any WMD in Iraq and that more time was needed for inspections. [Source: CNN, 2/14/03] FEBRUARY 15, 2003 – IAEA WARNS WHITE HOUSE NO NUCLEAR EVIDENCE: The head of the IAEA told the U.N. in February that "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq." The IAEA examined "2,000 pages of documents seized Jan. 16 from an Iraqi scientist's home -- evidence, the Americans said, that the Iraqi regime was hiding government documents in private homes. The documents, including some marked classified, appear to be the scientist's personal files." However, "the documents, which contained information about the use of laser technology to enrich uranium, refer to activities and sites known to the IAEA and do not change the agency's conclusions about Iraq's laser enrichment program." [Source: Wash. Post, 2/15/03] FEBURARY 24, 2003 – CIA WARNS WHITE HOUSE ‘NO DIRECT EVIDENCE’ OF WMD: "A CIA report on proliferation released this week says the intelligence community has no ‘direct evidence’ that Iraq has succeeded in reconstituting its biological, chemical, nuclear or long-range missile programs in the two years since U.N. weapons inspectors left and U.S. planes bombed Iraqi facilities. ‘We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs,’ said the agency in its semi-annual report on proliferation activities." [NBC News, 2/24/03] MARCH 7, 2003 – IAEA REITERATES TO WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF NUKES: IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said nuclear experts have found "no indication" that Iraq has tried to import high-strength aluminum tubes or specialized ring magnets for centrifuge enrichment of uranium. For months, American officials had "cited Iraq's importation of these tubes as evidence that Mr. Hussein's scientists have been seeking to develop a nuclear capability." ElBaradei also noted said "the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that documents which formed the basis for the [President Bush’s assertion] of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic." When questioned about this on Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney simply said "Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong." [Source: NY Times, 3/7/03: Meet the Press, 3/16/03] MAY 30, 2003 – INTEL PROFESSIONALS ADMIT THEY WERE PRESSURED: "A growing number of U.S. national security professionals are accusing the Bush administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the $30 billion intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq . A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terrorist groups. This team, self-mockingly called the Cabal, 'cherry-picked the intelligence stream' in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick Lang, a official at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The DIA was "exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD," or weapons of mass destruction, he said. Greg Thielmann, an intelligence official in the State Department, said it appeared to him that intelligence had been shaped 'from the top down.'" [Reuters, 5/30/03 ] JUNE 6, 2003 – INTELLIGENCE HISTORIAN SAYS INTEL WAS HYPED: "The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq , a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed study of the spy agency's public pronouncements." [Reuters, 6/6/03]
combine lies w/ innuendo enough and you still don't get "facts." there's no evidence the the admin knew the intel was false.
LOL Basso cashing in his opinion change chip from four years 8 months ago yes i understand sam brought this thread up in another thread but its still funny
To get under your skin and invalidate your earlier post. Thanks for bumping this thread though in order to tout the "I can change my mind if it makes me look bad!" clause - which says quite a bit about your judgment and how it's not based on anything other than pure partisan reasons. (and your love of gay rights! Except for that your political heros like Bush, Plain, etc all want to amend the constituion to enshrine anti-gay discrimination - I guess you reserved the right to change your mind on that too? - don't answer that as I really don't care too much.) The best example of that in this thread isn't Powell though, it's you once again promising eventual WMD finds, reminding us once again as to why your posts here are kind of joke.
and your hero wants a constitutional amendment to guarantee jobs (who would provide them? the gov'ment!) and redistribute wealth. what's his position on gay marriage? Biden's? not too dissimilar from the rev wright.
A constitutional amendment to guarantee jobs and redistribute wealth? You're just a bleating sheep now because you know that that is not true - is this the part where a complete novice like yourself embarrasses yourself by trying to discuss aspects of Con Law that you don't understand and extrapolate something? Please let it be.... Ah, the sweet sound of despair in the form of Reverend Wright and pretend ebonics. I do know that his position is not that of GWB and your girl Palin - to entrench anti-gay discrimination into the Constitution of the United States. So I can tell you that it's probably more aligned with your purported view.
You're outdoing yourself. You bump a four-year-old thread and then, in a classic reference to Rev. Wright, you type in an affected style simulating ebonics. We know you'll claim ignorance, but you know that when you type that like, or T_J calls him "Revvum Wright," you're race baiting. You, T_J, and bigtexxx can't help yourselves in casually poking fun at blacks and the evidence is overwhelming.
at Obama's rally in ohio yesterday: [rquoter]U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D. Toledo) whipped the crowd up before Mr. Obama took the stage yesterday telling them that America needed a Second Bill of Rights guaranteeing all Americans a job, health care, homes, an education, and a fair playing field for business and farmers. [/rquoter] http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081014/NEWS09/810140299
