If sapling can make up what Dems/liberals/Bush hatas believe, he should not mind others making up what he believes, right? I firmly believe that sapling believes: To satiate the US military's bloodlust, war for any reason is a good thing. No body count is too high, as long as Bush'd political goals are meet. Stupid people can not lie. Saddam was an imminent danger to the US. Rumsfeld for his own personal reasons knows where the Iraq WMD are but isn't telling. The Shiites won't be a majority in Iraq by the time we get through with them.
And I firmly believe that No Worries: Is not just a Democrat, but a Socialist of the worst order; Would eliminate the US military all together had he the chance; Would erase the US as an entity, and meld us with the UN; Has no problem with any US troops dying, only winning; Would have sent Saddam cash had he the means. Oh, and - "centrifuge"... Say it with me: "Centrifuge". Just a matter of time.
Conservatives core duty on WMDs Excerpt--------------- <i>Perhaps the administration manipulated the evidence, choosing information that backed its view, turning assumptions into certainties, and hyping equivocal materials. That, too, would hardly be unusual. <b>But no president should take the US into war under false pretenses. </b>There is no more important decision: The American people deserve to hear official doubts as well as certitudes. The point is not that the administration is necessarily guilty of misbehavior, but that it should be forced to defend its decision making process. Pointing to substitute justifications for the war just won't do. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz notes that the alleged Al Qaeda connection divided the administration internally, and humanitarian concerns did not warrant risking American lives. Only fear over Iraqi possession of WMD unified the administration, won the support of allies, particularly Britain, and served as the centerpiece of the administration's case. If the WMD didn't exist, or were ineffective, Washington's professed case for war collapses. Conservatives' lack of interest in the WMD question takes an even more ominous turn when combined with general support for presidential warmaking. Republicans - think President Eisenhower, for instance - once took seriously the requirement that Congress declare war. These days, however, Republican presidents and legislators, backed by conservative intellectuals, routinely argue that the chief executive can unilaterally take America into war. Thus, in their view, once someone is elected president, he or she faces no legal or political constraint. The president doesn't need congressional authority; Washington doesn't need UN authority. Allied support is irrelevant. The president needn't offer the public a justification for going to war that holds up after the conflict ends. The president may not even be questioned about the legitimacy of his professed justification. Accept his word and let him do whatever he wants, irrespective of circumstances.</I> http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0708/p09s01-coop.html
"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit" of weapons of mass destruction, Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light -- through the prism of our experience on 9-11." Rumsfeld: No New Iraq Weapons Evidence Before War WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday the United States did not go to war with Iraq (news - web sites) because of dramatic new evidence of banned weapons but because it saw existing information on Iraqi arms programs in a new light after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. "The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit" of weapons of mass destruction, Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light -- through the prism of our experience on 9-11." Rumsfeld appeared before the committee a day after the White House acknowledged that President Bush's claim in his State of the Union speech that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was based on forged information. While Bush justified the invasion to topple former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein largely on his alleged chemical and biological weapons and possible pursuit of nuclear weapons, such arms have not been found in the 10 weeks after the war. Congressional committees are evaluating whether the administration may have used faulty or exaggerated intelligence on Iraq's weapons to justify the war. Rumsfeld said Iraq "had 12 years to conceal its programs," and "uncovering those programs will take time." Iraq's refusal to comply with U.N. resolutions requiring it to show it had destroyed its banned weapons brought on the war, he said. "The United States did not choose a war -- Saddam Hussein did. For 12 years he violated 17 United Nations resolutions without cost or consequence," Rumsfeld said. Rumsfeld also maintained that most of Iraq is safe after the war, with most of the recent attacks against U.S. and British forces concentrated in Baghdad and surrounding areas. But Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's ranking Democrat, lashed out at the administration for not pressing the United Nations and NATO to take part in building military security in Iraq, where U.S. troops are being killed and wounded in daily attacks. "The whole world has a stake in the stability of Iraq," Levin said. "It is a mystery to me why apparently we have not reached out to NATO and to the United Nations as institutions." "Their support could bring significant additional forces such as German and French forces through NATO and Indian and Egyptian forces through a U.N. endorsement," he added.
President Bush who is the person rewriting history? "There's no doubt in my mind that when it's all said and done the facts will show the world the truth," Bush said at a joint news conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki. Asked for the first time about the uranium issue, Bush said, "There's going to be a lot of attempts to rewrite history." Bush Defends U.S. Justification for Iraq War By Randall Mikkelsen PRETORIA, South Africa (Reuters) - President Bush said Wednesday he remained confident the Iraq war was right, even though the White House acknowledged it had been a mistake to accuse Saddam Hussein of trying to buy uranium from Niger. "I am absolutely confident in the decision I made," said Bush, who ordered U.S.-led forces to invade Iraq on the basis of intelligence that Saddam had arms of mass destruction programs. "There's no doubt in my mind that when it's all said and done the facts will show the world the truth," Bush said at a joint news conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki. Asked for the first time about the uranium issue, Bush said, "There's going to be a lot of attempts to rewrite history." The White House has acknowledged Bush relied on now discredited information when he said in a State of the Union speech in January the Iraqi leader tried to buy uranium from the West African state of Niger for arms of mass destruction. But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Wednesday it was "one single sentence" in a larger case against Iraq that remained valid. But the United States' close ally Britain defended its own allegation that Saddam had sought uranium from Niger, saying its evidence was separate from the information used by Washington. Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said Wednesday Britain had "different knowledge" from the United States to back up its charge, set out in Blair's September 2002 dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. "Our information comes from good, reliable sources..," said a British official. He declined to say who had provided it. "SADDAM WAS THREAT TO WORLD PEACE" The United States and Britain have found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction since toppling Saddam on April 9. But Bush said he was confident Saddam had had a weapons of mass destruction program and that Washington had underestimated Iraq's nuclear progress before the 1991 Gulf War. "Saddam Hussein was a threat to world peace. And there's no doubt in my mind that the United States ... did the right thing in removing him from power," Bush said. The annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress is one of the most visible and important speeches that a U.S. president can make, with each line reflecting a careful assessment of White House priorities. Fleischer said the uranium charge, based on documents purporting to show Iraqi officials were seeking to buy the material from Niger, should not have been in the speech. The documents, obtained by European intelligence agencies, are now accepted as forgeries. "With the advantage of hindsight...this information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech," Fleischer said. A former U.S. ambassador, asked to investigate an intelligence report alleging the uranium purchase bid, said in a New York Times article Sunday he had told Washington months before the speech that such a transaction was "highly doubtful." White House National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton said Tuesday that in the run-up to the speech, a national intelligence estimate referred to attempts by Iraq to acquire uranium from "several countries in Africa." Democrats seized on the White House admission to demand a full review of how Bush's Republican administration used intelligence to make the case for war in Iraq.
Hearsay and Conjecture are kinds of evidence. Approaching 6 months of fruitless searches without any concrete evidence that they had a WMD program of any kind. Check the riverbed PLEASE. The official said members of the group are speaking with Iraqis knowledgeable about Iraq's weapons programs, including numerous scientists. "Certainly the case is being built that, no doubt in anybody's mind, they had a program," the official said. "We have good documents. We have come across documentation of their program." But the past existence of Iraq chemical and biological weapons is not in dispute. The Iraqis used chemical weapons in the 1980s against Iranian troops and against Iraqi Kurdish civilians. And Iraqi officials admitted to the United Nations in 1995 the existence of a biological arms program. Leaders of Iraq Weapons Search Brief Senators By Tabassum Zakaria WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.-led experts have not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but have uncovered documents pointing to a program to develop such weapons, U.S. officials said, as the two men leading the hunt on Thursday briefed senators on their efforts. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay and Army Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton were testifying at closed-door hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Kay was sent by the CIA to Iraq as a special advisor to develop a strategy for finding alleged weapons of mass destruction. Dayton, director of operations for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, heads the Iraq Survey Group searching for evidence of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Kay and Dayton had not come up with a "smoking gun" in the search for such weapons even after investigators spoke with key Iraqi scientists, but have found evidence of weapons programs. The United States went to war in March saying Iraq posed an imminent threat because it possessed large amounts of weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons have been found since the government of Saddam Hussein was toppled in April. A defense official said members of the Iraq Survey Group "have come across information of a variety of types -- through interrogation of people, conversations with people, (and) documents that have been recovered that clearly point to a WMD program." "One document will lead us to someplace else, or name people. Then we'll try to go find those people," the official said. Some of the information from some of the lower-level Iraqis "has proved very fruitful -- not led us to any buried 'smoking gun,' so to speak, but certainly has given a lot of insight into how they moved things around and when they did," the official added. Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat and 2004 presidential candidate, said at a news conference he hoped evidence of Iraqi weapons programs would be found. "If we do not find weapons of mass destruction and we do not find that they were positioned in a way for imminent use, the credibility of the United States government abroad and the credibility of the United States government with its own people here in the United States will be significantly eroded," Graham said. The Iraq Survey Group, with roughly 1,500 personnel, is staffed mostly by Americans, but with some British and Australians, the official said. It took over the search for such weapons in June. The Australians are leading the document-reviewing effort, the official said, while British military officer John Deverell serves as Dayton's deputy. The official said members of the group are speaking with Iraqis knowledgeable about Iraq's weapons programs, including numerous scientists. "Certainly the case is being built that, no doubt in anybody's mind, they had a program," the official said. "We have good documents. We have come across documentation of their program." But the past existence of Iraq chemical and biological weapons is not in dispute. The Iraqis used chemical weapons in the 1980s against Iranian troops and against Iraqi Kurdish civilians. And Iraqi officials admitted to the United Nations in 1995 the existence of a biological arms program.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2086924/ Calling Out Colin What Powell got wrong in his U.N. briefing on Iraq. By Fred Kaplan Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2003, at 3:27 PM PT Revisiting the Powell report In the middle of a fascinating article in Monday's Los Angeles Times, which quotes several former Iraqi officers on why they lost the war so badly, the following passage leaps out: "Commanders interviewed for this article said they were issued no orders regarding chemical or biological weapons. And they denied that Iraq ever possessed such weapons." The truth of this denial is, by now, close to inescapable. Too much time has passed, too many suspicious sites have been inspected, too many knowledgeable sources have been interrogated, for much doubt to remain on the matter. Maybe a ton of VX will be unearthed in Ahmed's basement tomorrow, but this is unlikely—and, at this point, few would regard such a find as authentic. Whatever officials and apologists may say about it in retrospect, the belief in Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" was the only compelling reason, really, to have fought this war. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator and his toppling is welcome. But the same could be said of North Korea's Kim Jong-il, with whom the Bush administration is now (properly) preparing to negotiate, or of Liberia's Charles Taylor, whose exile didn't strike Bush as worth the commitment of more than a handful of Marines. Even Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's intellectual architect of Gulf War II, admitted in his famous Vanity Fair interview that Iraqi human rights alone would not have justified the sacrifice of American soldiers. So let us ask, one more time: Where are the Iraqi WMD? Or, more to the point now, since such weapons will probably never be found: Why did so many—including Bush officials, whose views on this issue, I think, were sincere, if hyped—believe Iraq had WMD in the first place? The best case that the administration ever made on the issue was Secretary of State Colin Powell's briefing before the U.N. Security Council last Feb. 5, shortly before the war. Powell introduced the briefing as "an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior" that "demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort to disarm" and, in fact, "are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction." Months later, news articles reported that Powell had spent several days at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., looking over the intelligence, and that he put only the strongest evidence in his briefing, tossing out many claims—for instance, the business about uranium-shopping in Niger—that he considered flimsy, if not fraudulent. Yet in hindsight, his best stuff now looks pretty thin. The four "chemical bunkers," which he showed in overhead spy photos, have since been scoured to a fare-thee-well and come up dry. Powell also made much of aluminum tubes, which he said could be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium* and thus constituted proof that Saddam remained "determined to acquire nuclear weapons." Even back in February, Powell conceded that some intelligence analysts thought the tubes were meant for conventional artillery rockets, though he added, "It strikes me as quite odd that the tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets." Now, it doesn't seem odd at all; indeed, the tolerances turn out to be exactly the same as those of conventional artillery tubes made in Italy. As for the "mobile biological-weapons labs," one trailer of which was supposedly found in northern Iraq last May, the Defense Intelligence Agency has recently concluded that the trailer was in fact what Iraqi officials claimed it was: a producer of hydrogen for military weather balloons. (Even the rival Central Intelligence Agency's report of May 28, which called the trailers "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological-warfare program," was, read closely, far more ambiguous than its sweeping summary paragraphs suggested.) This leaves one piece of Powell's briefing that remains, to this day, puzzling. It involved two intercepted phone conversations that Powell played and translated. One, recorded Nov. 26, the day before U.N. weapons inspections were to resume, was said to be between a colonel and a brigadier general in the Iraqi Republican Guard. The general says, "I'll come see you in the morning. I'm worried you all have something left." The colonel replies, "We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left." The implication is that the Iraqis have removed illegal materials from a site to be inspected to the next day. The other conversation, which Powell said was recorded Jan. 30, was supposedly between two commanders of the 2nd Republican Guard Corps. One reads aloud an instruction, as the other writes it down, phrase by phrase: "Remove the expression 'nerve agent' wherever it comes up in wireless communications." This was by far the most persuasive part of Powell's briefing. At the time, I called it a "smoking gun," writing, "Assuming the tape is genuine and the translation correct, here is the evidence … that a) the Iraqis possess illegal weapons; (b) they are deliberately hiding them from the inspectors; and c) they are not likely to give up the weapons on their own." I still stand by the logic of that sentence, but I would like to italicize those first few words: "Assuming the tape is genuine…" Given all the shenanigans that have been revealed since the war ended—the forged letter about uranium from Niger, the fictitious claim in Britain's intelligence dossier that Iraqi troops could fire chemical shells with 45 minutes' notice, and all the rest—it can no longer be assumed that the tape is real or that the people speaking on the tape are who Powell said (and no doubt thinks) they are. It has been well known since last fall that the Bush administration was actively seeking intelligence that would show Iraq had two things: weapons of mass destruction and a connection with al-Qaida. When the CIA and DIA failed to come up with the goods, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a handful of his top aides formed their own intelligence network to search more carefully. If the word had gone out, to friends far and wide, that Rumsfeld was looking for this sort of evidence, is it not conceivable that someone with an interest in seeing Saddam overthrown—and there were many parties who had such an interest—might have "staged" a phone conversation that they knew the National Security Agency would intercept? Maybe this is far-fetched. If so, the administration should finally tell us who these officers were. Surely there is no point keeping this information classified; revealing their identities would not put them in any danger. These tapes form the last shred of possible evidence that Iraq might have had chemical or biological weapons in the past nine months—that, in other words, the war had any legitimate cause. If the officers were real, name them. There is another possibility, perhaps equally far-fetched: that the officers were real but they were making things up, on orders, on the assumption that U.S. agents were listening in. Consider this: If Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, why did he behave as if he did? Deterrence might be a reason. If the United States thought he had these weapons, maybe it wouldn't invade. (CIA Director George Tenet had testified, after all, that Saddam would use these weapons only if his regime were threatened with destruction; this logic was the main reason many Americans opposed the war before it started.) History is filled with precedents for similar disinformation campaigns. In the late 1950s, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed that his factories were churning out ICBMs "like sausages"—when, in fact, his ICBM program was dreadfully stalled. Khrushchev worried that the Americans were planning a nuclear first strike and thought a Potemkin missile program would give them second thoughts. This was a gross miscalculation; his thundering statements only spurred Eisenhower, then Kennedy, to accelerate and expand the construction of U.S. nuclear missiles. Monday's Los Angeles Times story reveals that Saddam was a stupid military commander in many ways. For instance, he thought a battle of Baghdad would be a repeat of Black Hawk Down, failing to consider that this time the United States might bring in armor. Maybe he was no less stupid as a diplomat, creating a perception that he thought would dissuade the Americans from invading when in fact it spurred them on.
Haven't heard too much about this lately... http://www.beachonline.com/labs.htm Iraqi Mobile Labs Nothing To Do With Germ Warfare An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist. Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.' The revelation that the mobile labs were to produce hydrogen for artillery balloons will also cause discomfort for the British authorities because the Iraqi army's original system was sold to it by the British company, Marconi Command & Control. Powell: We Got it Right A U.S. intelligence report on the trailers, portions of which were read to ABCNEWS, said: "Biological weapons agent production is the only consistent, logical purpose for these vehicles." The report also said the trailers were "strikingly similar" to mobile labs described by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his U.N. speech in February. In that speech, Powell said such labs were capable of producing anthrax. Powell met with reporters today, refusing to describe the analysis as a vindication, but nevertheless expressing pride. "We have taken our time on this one, because we wanted to make sure we got it right, and the intelligence community, I think, is convinced now that that's the purpose they served," he said. "I think we knew what we were saying when we went to the United Nations on the 5th of February, and I was pleased to be the one to present the case." © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 by Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
Woofer: I just read that article and wondered how long it would take to appear here. Why do I even bother with other news sources?? The above quote I found very interesting. A much more balanced piece than most of the the Bush/Halliburton conspiracy ranting, or Doin' it all for the Iraqui people drivel. I guess we'll never truly know, and the spin meisters will tell us what they want us to beleive.
And yet, there isn't a right of center political talking head on tv or radio who hasn't gone on and on about what? The asprin factory Clinton allegedly bombed, thinking it was something else. chortle, chortle, hrmph Rush Oneball can't get through a week without mentioning it. Hannity, O'Reilly, Savage, they all have lived off that story for years. But let the Bush kid do it, and "well, those WMD probably got shipped to Iran or Syria."
The media isn't reporting the investigations of non-existent WMD as intensively as they were, but the investigations in the UK and the US continue--- The main reason we invaded Iraq was the imminent danger posed by Iraqi WMD--don't forget that extremely important fact. Trust me it will not go away no matter what the spin. Downing Street hardened up WMD dossier, inquiry told Agencies 13 August 2003 Government weapons expert David Kelly told a BBC journalist that Downing Street had been involved in hardeninng up its dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. A tape recording of the voice of the dead scientist, who died after slashing his wrist, was played today to the Hutton inquiry which is examining the circumstances leading up to his death Susan Watts, science editor of BBC2's Newsnight, recorded a phone conversation with Dr Kelly the day after a report on BBC Radio 4's Today programme claimed that the dossier had been "sexed up" by Downing Street. In an earlier conversation with Dr Kelly, he had said that it was a mistake for the Government's dossier to include a claim that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction could be ready within 45 minutes. On the tape, she asked him whether Alastair Campbell, Dowing Street's communications director, had pressed for the 45 minute claim to be included in the dossier. He replied: "All I can say is the Number 10 Downing Street press office... But I think Alastair Campbell is synonymous with that press office because he's responsible for it." Ms Watts told the inquiry that Dr Kelly had told her that the 45-minute claim was the cause of the row between the intelligence services, the Cabinet Office and Downing Street. Quoting Dr Kelly, she said: "They picked up on it and once they have picked up on it, you cannot pull it back from them." On the tape, the pair discussed another recent story in the news before turning to the Andrew Gilligan report on the September dossier. They agreed they had spoken before on the subject. Then Ms Watts said: "You were more specific than the source on the Today programme, not that that necessarily means it was one and the same person. "In fact, you actually referred to Alastair Campbell." Dr Kelly said: "To you?" Ms Watts replied: "Yes." The next section of the tape was inaudible until Ms Watts said: "He (Gilligan) presumably decided not to name Alastair Campbell himself..." She added later: "Are you getting much flak about that?" Dr Kelly replied: "Me? No, I was in New York." Earlier, Ms Watts told Lord Hutton's inquiry that said that in a conversation with Dr Kelly on 12 May, they discussed the discovery of alleged mobile weapons laboratories which had been discovered in Iraq. Dr Kelly told her that initially he was 90 per cent certain that they were WMD laboratories, as the Americans claimed, but by the time of this conversation he was only between 40 per cent and 50 per cent certain. He told her that coalition forces may have confused processes used in the production of pesticides for a WMD laboratory. He also told her that "he did not think the British had a definitive position on Iraq's exact capabilities". Describing some of the claims made by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and US President George Bush about Iraq's capabilities, he told her "it was spin". Ms Watts said Dr Kelly told her: "The reality was that they (Iraq) had programmes - not a view they want to be heard."
All the lies will eventually catch up with the Bush administration, its only a matter of time. Charles Pena, a Cato Institute defense analyst, said the U.S. government has failed to "come up with the goods" -- actual weapons of mass destruction -- to substantiate Bush's stated reason for waging war. Pena noted that U.S. forces enjoy unrestricted access in Iraq, that Iraqis familiar with arms programs no longer face reprisals from Saddam's government, and that many in Saddam's inner circle knowledgeable about any weapons programs are in U.S. custody, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali." "There are no longer any valid excuses for not finding this stuff," Pena said. Pentagon Counsels Patience in Weapons Hunt in Iraq By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Tuesday the search for any weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq will take time, but some analysts said there was no valid excuse for failing to find arms cited by President Bush as a justification for war. U.S. forces have been in Iraq searching for evidence of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons for more than five months but have not found them. The Iraq Survey Group, headed by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has led the search since June, with guidance from former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay. "I don't know anyone who is particularly frustrated. It is a process that we knew would take some time," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. "Iraq's a large country that had for years been able to operate under the auspices of (U.N. weapons) inspections, and they were skilled at being able to mask and hide a WMD program. And one should not expect this to be easy. But it is an effort that has the resources, the skills and the people necessary to get to the bottom of this," Whitman added. Whitman said he did not know how long the search would take. Bush, before ordering the invasion in March that toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, referred to an imminent threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a prime justification for war. Charles Pena, a Cato Institute defense analyst, said the U.S. government has failed to "come up with the goods" -- actual weapons of mass destruction -- to substantiate Bush's stated reason for waging war. Pena noted that U.S. forces enjoy unrestricted access in Iraq, that Iraqis familiar with arms programs no longer face reprisals from Saddam's government, and that many in Saddam's inner circle knowledgeable about any weapons programs are in U.S. custody, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali." "There are no longer any valid excuses for not finding this stuff," Pena said. "And, quite frankly, it's one of the reasons why you never even hear the subject brought up any more. And to some degree there's a good reason for that. The more pressing thing is not WMD, but making sure that people aren't getting killed, that troops aren't getting shot at and buildings aren't getting blown up in Iraq," Pena added. A defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Iraq Survey Group members were interrogating people involved in Iraq's arms programs, studying documents and computer hard drives, visiting sites and examining "dual-use" equipment that has both civilian and military applications. The official asked people to be patient with the effort. "I think everyone's very confident that they're going to demonstrate that there was a WMD program. I never was one that said you had to produce weapons to show that they had a program. I know that wouldn't hurt. But the fact of the matter is they're also looking at the possibility that weapons were removed from the country," the official said. Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan, said the most likely explanation was that Saddam disposed of his chemical and biological weapons but kept the ability to reconstitute these arms programs once he felt free to do so. "If they're not there, then you went to war and undertook this very costly rebuilding for no good reason -- or (the weapons) went someplace else, which in effect is what you were trying to stop by going in there," said Korb, now with the Council on Foreign Relations.
WOW Friendly!!! now that's a balls post if I've ever seen one! underoverup! Come on! that WMD story is sooo last week! It's all about the PROGRAMS now! You know! Programs that can launch within 45 minutes! And they've got programs everywhere! I mean EVERYWHERE!!!!
The lack of any WMD finds disturbs me to the core- no matter how many times the Bush administration spins the war efforts as being "good" for the Iraqi people. We went to war because Iraqi WMD posed an dire risk to the US and its allies-- so said the Bush Administration. Now they talk of these "programs" that were hidden in a dirt farm and could have been restarted in the blink of an eye to sell to terrorists who could then destroy the planet. Now this "war" to save us from WMD has our young men and women having to use confiscated weapons from the enemy to defend themselves as they dream of being anywhere but Iraq. We reached a critical point this week as more soldiers have died since the major military combat ended (according to supreme aviator doll Bush jr.-- btw- the war hasn't ended) than did during the invasion. The reasons for this war were based on lies and I will at least try and do my own small part to let people know the truth about the non-existence Iraqi WMD.
It's already off the front page. Usually around page 4 or 5 of my daily paper these days... Pretty soon it'll be right around the gossip pages.
Well personally do you feel the Bush administration WMD lies should be relegated to the back pages or the gossip columns? Just because its old news doesn't mean its not important news. When an administration convinces a nation to go to war over a blatant lie(s) that group of individuals should be held accountable. Which in the end I believe they will be held accountable.
I've never doubted we would find WMD, even if we have to plant them. Given that none have been discovered, "finding" them outside of Iraq would be convenient. I will be dubious of any find at this late date. These things leave a trail and are not so easy to make disappear.
you miss my meaning I personally believe that if Belgium had had some balls, Bush, Chaney, Rummy and co. would all be brought up on war charges. This administration is disgusting. mc mark - part of the liberal, left wing, lunatic fringe that wants to see the downfall of Amerika.
