Man, where's treeman?

Not trying to call him out, but I am seriously interested in his take on this. When I and MacBeth and so many others were questioning the intelligence ramping up to the war we were told we would look like idiots later. I've heard all the stuff from the crowd that prefers moving the goalpost to admitting a mistake (it was about liberation, dontcha know), but I miss those diehard defenders of the WMD claims. Calling all treemen...

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040917/D8553BJG0.html

U.S. Weapons Inspector: Iraq Had No WMD


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Sep 16, 8:54 PM (ET)

By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER


WASHINGTON (AP) - Drafts of a report from the top U.S. inspector in Iraq conclude there were no weapons stockpiles, but say there are signs the fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had dormant programs he hoped to revive at a later time, according to people familiar with the findings.

In a 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.

Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons.

As Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons programs at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international community waned.

After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United States has found no weapons of mass destruction - its chief argument for overthrowing the regime.

An intelligence official said Duelfer could wrap up the report as soon as this month. Those who discussed the report inside and outside the government did so on the condition of anonymity because it contains classified material and is not yet completed.

The report is expected to be similar to findings reported by Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay, who presented an interim report to Congress in October. Kay left the post in January, saying, "We were almost all wrong" about Saddam's weapons programs.

Duelfer's report, however, is expected to fall between the position of the Bush administration before the war - portraying Saddam as a grave threat - and the declarative statements Kay made after he resigned.

It will also add more evidence and flesh out Kay's October findings. Then, Kay said the Iraq Survey Group had only uncovered limited evidence of secret chemical and biological weapons programs, but he found substantial evidence of an Iraqi push to boost the range of its ballistic missiles beyond prohibited ranges.

He also said there was almost no sign that a significant nuclear weapons project was under way.

Duelfer's report doesn't reach firm conclusions in all areas. For instance, U.S. officials are still investigating whether Saddam's fallen regime may have sent chemical weapons equipment and several billion dollars over the border to Syria. That has not been confirmed, but remains an area of interest to the U.S. government.

The Duelfer report will come months after the Senate Intelligence Committee released a scathing assessment of the prewar intelligence on Iraq.

After a yearlong inquiry, the Republican-led committee said in July the CIA kept key information from its own and other agencies' analysts, engaged in "group think" by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and allowed President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to make false statements.

The Iraq Survey Group has been working since the summer of 2003 to find Saddam's weapons and better understand his prohibited programs. More than a thousand civilian and military weapons specialists, translators and other experts have been devoted to the effort.

 

Oh my ga ga... What have you done with Trader_Poof? Trader_Poof would never admit the other side was right.

Seriously though Poofie, go find ONE instance of me being wrong on Iraq. Just find ONE. I dare you. You can't.

The administration (and you) said Iraq had stockpiles of WMD's. They (and you) said they were six months from nukes. They suggested a link to Al Qaeda, Osama and 9/11. You went further -- you insisted there was one. They (and you) said the US knew exactly where the stockpiles were located. They (and you) said time and again that the WMD's, the smoking gun, were already found. They (and you) said we would be greeted as liberators. They (and you) ignored warnings that an invasion of Iraq would attract terrorists there. They (and you) said the war would pay for itself through oil revenues. They (and you) said the initial deployment represented more than enough troops, against the advice of military leaders (one of which was fired for suggesting we weren't sending enough men). They (and you) said the doubters would be shamed by the facts.

They -- and you -- were wrong on every single count. Every. Single. One. One difference between you and them is that they've since retracted virtually every one of those claims. You, as of today, have retracted one of them. Before today it was none.

I, meanwhile, never stated definitively that any of those things were not true. How could I know if they were or not? I even said that if a link to 9/11 was found I would support the war. I said that if WMD's, coupled with the intent and ability to inflict harm on the US were found there, I would support the preemptive invasion. There wasn't and there weren't.

But I didn't say those things were definitively untrue. What I did was express skepticism about the above issues, because nothing I'd read, seen or heard (apart from Bush's bogus SOTU) had convinced me I should take them at their word. Apparently I was right to be skeptical on each of the lies/exaggerations/miscalculations/mistakes (pick one or several of the previous words - I'd be mightily interested in which of them you think provides better spin).

And you have the nerve to say I got lucky and was right once. With regard to my skepticism, I was right on every single count. And you were wrong. Worse, Bush was wrong. And now a lot of people are dead.

 

I didn't ridicule treeman. I asked where he was. In the MacBeth thread several people piled on to call him a liar when there was no hint of suggestion of evidence he'd ever lied. At most you could say I'm accusing treeman of being wrong, but I'm not even entirely doing that. Not to him -- just to you. All I'm doing with regard to him is asking where he went and what he'd have to say about the WMD report.

What's truly hilarious is your unfailing penchant for ignoring a massive shaming.

1. You said I was right once, like a broken clock.

2. I provided an exhaustive list of issues on which I was right and you were wrong and challenged you to prove that I was ever (EVER) wrong on Iraq.

3. You changed the subject as usual. ("Bush lied." "Oh yeah? Kerry looks French and his middle name's Forbes. OWNED.")

You are so incredibly bad at this debating stuff it's no wonder you run away whenever anyone answers one of your posts. andy offered to debate you with three judges including your best friend and number one cheerleader on the site, the site's most conservative admin and a moderate Republican and you STILL declared victory (LOL) and ran away.

And now you're doing it again.

How do you say... Oh yes...

OWNED.

Again.

 

Wow, that's a lot of words considering you didn't address a single item from my posts.

It actually boils down to this:

1. You said I got lucky and was right once on Iraq.

2. I provided an exhaustive list of issues relating to Iraq on which I was right and you were wrong and challenged you to provide one single Iraq related issue on which I was wrong.

3. You changed the subject like you always do.

4. I called you out.

5. You called me negative and brought up Howard Dean again.

Do you ever win? I guess you can't lose if you don't play, right?

 

Sorry, basso. I woke up today to find out the thread had become one almost entirely about me. Who does that remind me of? Oh yeah... O'Neill, Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke, et cetera, et cetera. Brilliant strategy. Back on topic...

I've said from the beginning that there is an explanation for where the WMD's from 88 might have gone. They might have degenerated to a point of uselessness. All biological and chemical weapons have a limited shelf life. There were plenty of arguments back then (though not terribly widely reported) that weapons as old as ones from 88 might have virtually disentegrated by now.

Apart from that argument, I don't know where they might have gone. What I did know was that the UN weapons inspectors were signaling that they probably weren't there while the US was saying they definitely were (and that we knew where they were). I kept saying back then that when they resolved that discrepancy I would decide whether or not to support the war. I said back then that even if they had WMD's that didn't mean they had the means to deliver them to us since they allegedly didn't have that kind of missile technology, but I said that if the WMD claims and the claims that they had a viable delivery method were true I would support the war. If we find out tomorrow, or in a year, that those claims were true, my position will change. As of today, there is no evidence that will happen.