We found a couple of trucks with lab equipment. http://www.boston.com/dailynews/148/wash/Intelligence_report_mobile_lab:.shtml . . . While the new report describes the trailers ''as the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program,'' U.S. officials have not reported finding any proof that Iraq had such weapons ready for use. . . . Boy, that was a clear and present danger to our troops in the invasion. If the invasion had taken, oh four years longer, we might have been in trouble...
Isn't it a bit early to gloat guys? I mean how silly you will all look if they do find WMD. Personally, I would not be bothered if they do or don't find them, and I am hardly bothered that they lied to us. I mean come on, how naive are you? Did Clinton lie, Did JFK? What president HASN'T lied....now that would be a first. DD
Lying about women, and lying to go to war are two completely different things. No soilder is going to die if Clinton lies about a BJ.
everyone say it with me: HE LIED UNDER OATH...HE LIED UNDER OATH...HE LIED UNDER OATH....TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE IN A CIVIL TRIAL...TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE IN A CIVIL TRIAL...TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE IN A CIVIL TRIAL!!! all while serving as president of the united states of america. i'm not equating the lies of bush and clinton...but i hate the "he just lied about sex" argument. carry on.
it probably doesn't...i just think the tendancy is to be flippant about it. i don't think it's that petty.
It's not petty at all. Lying under oath about anything, especially while a sitting President, is seriously bad shizznit. However, no matter Clinton's crimes, the end result of his lies were embarassment to himself and somewhat to the nation. Bush's lies kill people. A rather substantial difference, if you ask me.
if bush lied, i would agree....i don't know if that's what happened or not. but again...i never said i was arguing comparatively. that wasn't the point of my post at all
Dakota, I'm not going to feel silly at all because I never doubted Saddam might have WMD. I only doubted that Bush and co. were being truthful in their assessment of the threat. Looking more and more these days like I was right to doubt and also more and more like those ones of you who parroted the admin's playing on 9/11 based fears to justify a war have real cause to feel not just silly but plain manipulated. And Max, be a little fair here. It was Dakota who started the flippancy about a president lying. pgabriel makes a good, if obvious point, about the consequences of those two president's lies. Couple months back a lot of you were outraged that some of us would suggest Bush might by lying for cynical reasons. The same ones now say they're glad he lied for cynical reasons. Some of you walk a very fine line.
I'm not saying Bush lied or didn't or if there or WMD or not. And you're right lying under oath is despicable at the very least. But my post was in response to the cavelier attitude DD takes about lying to go to war. That's the flippant attitude you should be concerned about.
batman -- fair enough..i didn't read past pgabriel's post...you know how strongly i feel on that issue! pgabriel -- all good.
DaDakota, do you think trustworthyness, and honesty should not be a political issue at all? Does character not matter in a presidential or other political candidate? Should candidates not care or call out other candidates when they lie?
Also known as CYA http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51355-2003May28.html?nav=hptop_tb U.S. Hedges on Finding Iraqi Weapons Officials Cite the Possibility of Long or Fruitless Search for Banned Arms By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, May 29, 2003; Page A01 Pressed in recent congressional hearings and public appearances to explain why the United States has been unable to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, senior Bush administration officials have begun to lay the groundwork for the possibility that it may take a long time, if ever, before they are able to prove the expansive case they made to justify the war. In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, administration officials charged that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had spent billions of dollars developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and was poised to hand them over to international terrorists or fire them at U.S. troops or neighboring countries. Nearly two months after the fall of Baghdad, officials continue to express confidence that the weapons will be found. "No one should expect this kind of deception effort to get penetrated overnight," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said in an interview yesterday. Wolfowitz said the administration's prewar emphasis on the existence of weapons of mass destruction stemmed from "one of the most widely-shared intelligence assessments that I know of. . . . We're a long way" from exhausting the search. But in speeches and comments in recent weeks, senior administration officials have begun to lower expectations that weapons will be found anytime soon, if at all, and suggested they may have been destroyed, buried or spirited out of the country. The U.S. invasion force moved so quickly into Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday in response to questions at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, that the Iraqis "didn't have time to . . . use chemical weapons. . . . They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer." Looking back at the spotlight the administration cast on the weapons issue in building its case for war, Wolfowitz said, "There was no oversell." But he acknowledged yesterday that there "had been a tendency to emphasize the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] issue" as the primary justification for war because of differences of opinion within the administration over the strength of other charges against the Iraqi government, including its alleged ties to al Qaeda. "The issue of WMD has never been in controversy," Wolfowitz said, "where there's been a lot of arguing back and forth about whether the Iraqis were involved in terrorism." In a briefing for reporters yesterday, senior intelligence officials released what they said was the "strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program." After examining two tractor-trailers found last month in Iraq, the officials said they found no trace of biological agents but added they are "highly confident" the high-tech equipment built into them was intended to produce biological weapons. In pressing for international approval of war, President Bush and his top aides said that Iraq possessed weapons that posed an immediate threat to its neighbors and to U.S. territory, and that U.N. inspectors were unlikely to find them in time. Since the Iraqi government collapsed April 9, U.S. military teams have been unsuccessful in finding any proscribed weapons. The teams are being replaced by a much larger weapons survey group that has yet to arrive in Iraq. The Pentagon has rejected suggestions that U.N. inspectors who left Iraq before the war be allowed to reenter the country and resume their search, although agreement has been reached with the International Atomic Energy Agency to send its experts to secure the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, a nuclear storage site 30 miles south of Baghdad that had been under IAEA seal for years. The site has been looted by Iraqis, and U.S. military teams found high levels of radiation there. But the agreement restricts the IAEA to a small area within the facility, and specifically prohibits the agency's emergency teams from investigating reports that some of the material has been removed and may be causing radiation sickness in some local communities. "The U.S. has informed us that, as the occupying powers, they have the responsibility for the welfare of the Iraqi people, including the nuclear health and safety issues," an IAEA spokesman said. Those mild words mask a dispute between the administration and the international agency, which first raised the danger posed by potential looting of the Tuwaitha site and others April 10. Having rejected the efforts of U.N. inspectors as insufficient before the war, the administration was not about to let them back in to look for weapons now, a senior administration official said, suggesting that the IAEA was looking for a pretext for a wider role in Iraq. "Make no mistake, the IAEA wanted to get back in and do its former inspection role," the official said. "And they were told, in no uncertain terms, no." The administration has also rejected the readmission into Iraq of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), which had responsibility for finding chemical and biological weapons, as well as production facilities. Before the war, U.S. officials expressed strong doubts the U.N. inspectors would be able to locate, among other things, the mobile biological laboratories that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell first described to the U.N. Security Council in February. The two trailers cited by intelligence officials yesterday have been under examination since they were found in northern Iraq last month. The officials said that key equipment in the trailers -- fermenters needed to produce biological agents -- was manufactured in 2002 and 2003, indicating that the units were recently built. They said Iraqi employees at the al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development and Engineering facility where the fermenters were constructed told them they were used to produce hydrogen gas for weather balloons and other purposes. But an intelligence official called that "a cover story," and said it would be an "inefficient" use of the facilities. Instead, U.S. officials said the labs closely resembled the description of mobile biological trailers provided in 1999 by an Iraqi defector whose information was the basis for Powell's presentation. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former U.N. weapons inspector, said yesterday that "the government's finding is based on eliminating any possible alternative explanation for the trucks, which is a controversial methodology under any circumstances." In the absence of "conclusive evidence," Albright suggested that an independent, international investigation was needed, and that "the logical group to perform this investigation is UNMOVIC." Beginning with Vice President Cheney last August, administration officials delivered a series of speeches expressing absolute certainty the Iraqi weapons existed. "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney said in an Aug. 26 address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. In October, Wolfowitz said, "Saddam Hussein is not going to easily give up the horrible weapons that he has worked so hard to obtain and paid such a high price to keep," using a phrase that he and Rumsfeld were to repeat often. "This is a man who has shown that he'll give up billions and billions of dollars every year," Rumsfeld said in November, "so that he can be free to develop those weapons and to have those weapons and to use those weapons to terrorize other countries." In congressional testimony last week, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith said he was "confident that we will eventually be able to piece together a fairly complete account of Iraq's WMD programs, but the process will take months, and perhaps years." In the interim, the House Select Committee on Intelligence has asked CIA Director George J. Tenet to review the intelligence underlying administration statements about Iraqi weapons. A similar request has come from the Senate committee, which has asked about specific claims regarding an Iraqi nuclear program. "I think there are a whole lot of other questions about WMD which are very, very unclear," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "They may have overestimated."
It might be hard to prove if ever the weapons of mass destruction, but the death toll to American troops continues. Eight since last Sunday. *************** Odessa Soldier Dies In Iraq Wed May 28, 5:55 PM ET Add Local - KMBC Eight American soldiers have died in Iraq (news - web sites) since Sunday, including one man from Odessa. The family of Pfc. Jeremiah Smith (pictured, left) got the call early Tuesday morning. A military spokesman informed them that the Fort Riley, Kan.-based soldier was killed when the vehicle in which he was riding ran over a land mine, KMBC's Bev Chapman reported. Smith worked as a cavalry scout in the 1st Infantry Division of the Army. Smith was the father of two daughters, and would have celebrated an anniversary with his wife on June 15. A cousin said Smith was due home soon. "So close, then to pass away on Memorial Day. That's really sad," said Neoma Risen, Smith's relative. The incident is under military investigation. Smith's family moved to Odessa from Independence. He joined the Army in February 2002, and had been stationed at Fort Riley since August. Iraq
Where are you johnheath, Trader_Jorge, treeman, sinohero? Those ones of you who told us opposition types how ashamed we should be when the US won a war against a country we all knew they'd beat? We all knew they'd beat them if we went to war, but some of us said it was wrong to do so with the evidence being so weak. When we won (which everyone knew we would), you guys said we should be ashamed for opposing such an obvious cause. Where are you now? Has it become, somehow, less obvious? Has it become somehow embarassing that you were lied to by your government? That you came around here shouting your zealotry in the name of an adminstration that lied to you? Where are you? You defended them every step of the way -- every time we said we doubted them you said we should be ashamed. They might yet find these weapons that it now seems they invented. But I find it weird you've disappeared just as soon as the going got rough. You were so full of beans every single day before. johnheath with your absolutely positively kinda stories bout how they found WMD and we should all be ashamed for opposing. treeman with your rabid defense of anything at all this admin did. Jorge with your 'we won and it's time for the rest of you to curl up in a corner.' YOU WERE LIED TO. YOU WERE MANIPULATED. YOU HAVE SHAMED YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU BELIEVED THESE LIARS. You really gonna vote for them again? Of course you are. God bless Amerika.
Treeboy is busy disproving all of my looney conspiracy theories, along with calling me a "thankless ignorant worm" in another thread. TJ? I don't know, I tried to call him out in that krugman/econ thread yesterday but nary a peep from him. Maybe they're off attacking windmills or something.
Naw, Bush didn't tell them to attack windmills. If he had, they'd be right here telling us how much we hate America for not attacking them.
The thing that really irks me about the whole Iraq situation is how the US had such a great war/battle plan that was hugely successful yet the US apparently had no plan whatsoever about how to run Iraq after it's "liberation". Serious shortsightedness, in my opinion.
And this surprises you? There was precedent ya know. Just look at Afghanistan. F**k em' up and run! Sounds like a high school bully to me.
