Colin Powell called prewar intelligence reports "Bullshit."

[jjimm]

*Originally posted by Brutus *
**And there is also talk of using magnetic bracelets to cure all that ails you. Neither is going to happen in our lifetimes. Europe spends far too little on defense to ever expect to rival the US. **

Brutus, this is the first time I have ever wholeheartedly agreed with you.

[Charlie_Tan]

Doh!

The point is not that EU could rival the U.S. in military power. The point is that when people are actually saying that, something is seriously wrong.

[december]

*Originally posted by iampunha *
**Just curious about one thing, december:

Name the last time a country was bombed because the best evidence that they posed a threat to anyone else was “conventional wisdom”. **

Perhaps the last time was when the US and NATO bombed the former Yugoslavia.

Of course, I didn’t say that common agreement on Iraq’s WMDs was the “best evidence.” I said that it was an indication that Bush sincerely believed what he was saying. But, you knew that…

[elf6c]

*Originally posted by december *
**Perhaps the last time was when the US and NATO bombed the former Yugoslavia.

Of course, I didn’t say that common agreement on Iraq’s WMDs was the “best evidence.” I said that it was an indication that Bush sincerely believed what he was saying. But, you knew that… **

Two things:

1. Yugoslavia was bombed mostly on the issue of the “ethnic cleaning” and the invasion and occupation of other parts of the former Yugoslavia. No other country was threatened. The instability itself may have spread, but that was hardly the reason.

2. Bush cannot have a sincere belief is some fact he worked very hard to manufacture. Bush tried to manufacture a tie to Al Queda and was laughed off the political stage- even Pubbies weren’t buying that. So they went with the WMD line- pressuring CIA and military analysts (we have provided you many legitimate non-rush limbaugh cites as to that). Hans Blick was there- investigated all the “hot leads” the Bush Administration had and nothing. The US has had plenty of time on the ground. No “tons” of WMD, no traces, no plants, no nothing. An empty dual use trailer. With no traces of WMD inside. That’s it?

Why- Wag the Dog baby(1). 9/11 grandstanding wasn’t hiding the numerous Bush failures on the ecomonic, political and social front anymore. And in the continued failures regarding promises regarding the effect of the Tax cuts (gee the economists were right and it had no effect other that to reward Billionaire’s for their contributions to his campaign), the failure to restore Afganistan or get Osama, the abject roll back of environmental standards, the destruction of the constitutional church and state seperations, and the rising sense that Bush didn’t have a clue on how to fix the economy or win the “war on terror”, despite rolling back many civil liberties.

(1) Irony alert- Pubbies claim Clinton was wagging the dog went he went after Al Queda in the Sudan. Turns out Clinton was right. I am sure they will admit their mistake any day now.

[Sofa_King]

From the article quoted by Demostylus:

Compact, transportable hydrogen generation systems are commercially available, safe, and reliable.

That begs a genuine question. Were the Iraqis allowed to procure such devices in the open market?

I’d bet a couple of aluminum cylinders that the answer is, “no.”

[elf6c]

Reposted from another thread for december:

Speaking of apologies- when Clinton bombed Iraq various high ranking Republicans claimed he was “wagging the dog” and we shouldn’t have bombed them or Al Queda. Seeing Bush later invaded Iraq even though nothing changed but the health of the economy, I am expecting those apologies to Clinton and the American people any day now.

Cites:

http://slate.msn.com/id/11384/

1. Overt Cynicism. The politician accuses Clinton of wagging the dog. Example: “It is obvious that he is doing this for political reasons” (Rep. Gerald Solomon, R-N.Y.).

2. Cynicism by innuendo. The accuser phrases the dog-wagging charge obliquely so that he can deny having made it. Example: “We have had either hostilities or threatened hostilities at interesting times throughout the last year” (incoming House Speaker Bob Livingston).

3. Backhanded cynicism. The accuser implies dog-wagging by saying either a) he can’t bring himself to believe Clinton would wag the dog; or b) the White House has assured him it’s not so. Example: “While I have been assured by administration officials that there is no connection with the impeachment process … **oth the timing and the policy are subject to question” (Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott).

http://www.conservativeusa.org/wagdog.htm

http://www.conservativeusa.org/iraq-war.htm

Feel the Irony-- feel it:

There are at least ten reasons why America should not now make war on Iraq, even if it were certain that such an effort would be “successful”:

1. President William J. Clinton lacks the moral authority to function properly as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United States.

2. Let’s not change the subject. The Number One business of the nation at this time should be the removal from office of William J. Clinton.

3. It is unconstitutional for America to go to war without a Congressional declaration of war.

4. Given the present set of facts, there is no Constitutional predicate on the basis of which Congress has the authority to initiate war, even with a declaration of war.

…

8. The strategic position of the United States in the world may be diminished, rather than enhanced, by an attack on Iraq. Many regimes friendly to the United States will be placed at severe risk if they are seen to assist, or even favor, the U.S. attack.

9. If we “succeed”, what have we gained? If we don’t begin a war, what have we lost?

10. War has consequences which are often unintended and almost always beyond comprehensive anticipation. If we and our “allies” join to attack Iraq, Iraq and its allies may combine to attack us in ways which cannot be fully foreseen. How many planes will crash? How many water supplies will be polluted? How many nuclear weapons will be detonated? How many civilian targets will be made subject to terrorist assault? Will chemical weapons be deployed?

http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/1999/mar99/psrmar99.html

First, it’s a “wag the dog” public relations ploy to involve us in a war in order to divert attention from his personal scandals (only a few of which were addressed in the Senate trial). He is again following the scenario of the “life is truer than fiction” movie Wag the Dog. The very day after his acquittal, Clinton moved quickly to “move on” from the subject of impeachment by announcing threats to bomb and to send U.S. ground troops into the civil war in Kosovo between Serbian authorities and ethnic Albanians fighting for independence. He scheduled Americans to be part of a NATO force under non-American command.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/eafricabombing/stories/decision082198.htm

The White House yesterday asserted that Clinton’s decision to bomb suspected terrorist installations was in no way linked to or affected by the Lewinsky controversy. At a minimum, however, the response to Clinton’s action showed how his legal and personal problems have altered the prism through which his presidential decisions are viewed.

Several Republicans yesterday raised the issue expressly. Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) said: “After months of lies and deceit and manipulations and deceptions – stonewalling – it raised into doubt everything he does and everything he says,” Coats said.

Administration officials said yesterday they had anticipated criticism that Clinton was following a “Wag the Dog” strategy – so-named after the recent movie in which a president tries to draw attention away from a sexual scandal by staging a phony war – but had no choice but to ignore it.

The same speculation arose last February made when Clinton contemplated military action against Iraq.

http://www.salon.com/news/1998/12/cov_17newsb.html

In a speech to the nation, President Clinton defended his attack on Iraq, saying a “strong, sustained series of airstrikes” against Iraq was necessary to punish Saddam Hussein for his refusal to comply with U.N. weapons inspectors. Only minutes into “Operation Desert Fox,” Republicans were crying “Wag the Dog.” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., joined other leading Republicans in claiming he could not support the attack because he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t politically motivated, although Lott had been briefed three weeks ago about the possibility of an attack if Saddam defied the United Nations.

And I wonder what a search of “wag the dog” would bring up here. Seeing Al Queda and Iraq are now deemed such critical threats, and alledge non-complance with UN resolutions are now ground for an invasion versus missle strikes and am sure all those Republicans will now apologize for their treasonous(1) political outbursts.
(1) irony fully intended

[elf6c]

More non-rush limbaugh cites for you:

Weapons of mass deception

In 1997, years before George W. Bush entered office, Donald H. Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz founded the Project for the New American Century, a neo- conservative think tank. As part of their larger published vision for “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” they repeatedly lobbied for “regime change” in Iraq in order to extend America’s influence in the Middle East.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, they began to build a case for invading Iraq. Many people, puzzled and confused, asked: What on earth does Iraq have to do with al Qaeda?

Since the CIA didn’t provide evidence for any connection, the answers would have to come from a new intelligence agency established by Rumsfeld, now secretary of defense, in the fall of 2001. Called the Office of Special Plans, it would be independent of both the CIA and Pentagon and headed by his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

The selling of the war turned out to be a huge success. The vast majority of Americans believed Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction and harbored nests of al Qaeda terrorists. Many Americans also believed that the Sept. 11 terrorists had included Iraqi men.

Alas

But none of the above is true. So far, no WMDs have been found. No Iraqis were involved in Sept. 11. No outposts of al Qaeda terrorists have been uncovered in Iraq. No traces of chemical or biological weapons have been detected in the two trailers.

In an interview with the magazine Vanity Fair, Wolfowitz now admits that the Bush administration focused on WMDs because it was politically expedient. “The truth,” he says, “is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction. . . .” He also discloses another justification that was “almost unnoticed but huge”-- the prospect of withdrawing American forces from Saudi Arabia once Saddam Hussein had been removed.

Truth test for war's justification

Truth test for war’s justification

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Failure to attack Iraq would give terrorists access to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

“We know he’s got ties with al-Qaida. A nightmare scenario, of course, is that he becomes the arsenal for a terrorist network and they could attack America,” Bush told us.

. . . .

Meanwhile, Bush administration officials and other revisionists have begun to diminish the threat Iraq’s weapons played as justification for the war and to tout its outcome regardless of the stated justification.

But Americans remember why we were told our treasury must be depleted and our sons and daughters put at risk. Ultimately, the administration’s fate may rest on whether it told us the truth.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/opinion/06KRIS.html (free registration required- accuracy not really needed though )

Spooks are spitting mad at the way their work was manipulated to exaggerate the Iraqi threat, and they are thus surprisingly loquacious (delighting those of us in journalism). They emphasize that even if weapons of mass destruction still turn up, there is a fundamental problem —not within the intelligence community itself, but with senior administration officials — particularly in the Pentagon.

“As an employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency, I know how this administration has lied to the public to get support for its attack on Iraq,” one of my informants rages. Some others see a pattern not so much of lying as of self-delusion — and of subjecting the intelligence agencies to those delusions.

and

“The president is a very powerful guy,” said Ray Close, who spent 26 years in the C.I.A. “When you sense what he wants, it’s very difficult not to go out and find it.”

As best I can reconstruct events, Mr. Rumsfeld genuinely felt that the C.I.A. and D.I.A. were doing a horrendous job on Iraq — after all, he was hearing much more alarming information from those close to Ahmad Chalabi. So the Pentagon set up its own intelligence unit, and it sifted through everyone else’s information and goaded other agencies to come up with more alarmist conclusions.

“He’s an ideologist,” one man in the spy world said of Mr. Rumsfeld. “He doesn’t start with the facts, even though he’s quite brainy. He has a bottom line, and then he gathers facts to support the bottom line.”

[elf6c]

Congress finally starting to get cranky:

What amazes me is that the president himself is not clamoring for an investigation," Byrd said from the floor of the Senate.
“It is his truthfulness that is being questioned. It is his integrity that is on the line,” the West Virginia Democrat said.
“Yet he has raised no question, expressed no curiosity, about the strange turn of events in Iraq – expressed no anger at the possibility that he might have been misled.”
“How is it that the president who was so adamant about the dangers of WMD, has expressed no concern about the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?” Byrd said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030606/pl_afp/us_war_iraq_politics_wmd_030606141042

[rjung]

‘‘Relatively inefficient but ingenious’’ is how one analyst described the mobile factories.

So what do the other 399 analysts think?

Oh, wait, what 399 other analysts? It’s not like we’ve actually let any impartial third parties look at this stuff, have we?

Their inefficiency, he added, was probably rooted in a decision to design the plants with enough technical ambiguity so they could be disclaimed as germ factories if discovered.

Or maybe they were inefficient for making bioweapons because they weren’t intended to make bioweapons?

Sheesh, by this kind of cockamamie logic, we’re going to point to an Iraqi fertilizer factory and call it a bioweapons lab because it’s got pipes and vats and chemicals and stuff, which could be rearranged to maybe make anthrax… :rolleyes:

[Squink]

I like John Dean’s take on this:

In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison.

If anyone should know scandal, it’s Dean.

[rexnervous]

*Originally posted by Squink *
**I like John Dean’s take on this: If anyone should know scandal, it’s Dean. **

Unfortunately, in the end it just won’t matter. The American public is too lazy, too short-sighted, too self-centered, and, to be blunt, too stupid to really understand the potential consequences of having a small cabal inside the government basically running policy, a cabal that has zero compunction about presenting false evidence/lies to other members of government, and as or more importantly, the general public, just to get the results it wants.

We won the war. Iraq is already a distant memory. We won. We’re Americans. What we do must be right. Plus, we won. So it’s all good.

[Squink]

We won the war. Iraq is already a distant memory. We won. We’re Americans. What we do must be right. Plus, we won. So it’s all good.

Let’s hope that the peace goes well, and inexpensively, or the taxpayers might start to wonder just why they are pouring money down the rathole that is American occupied Iraq.

[samclem]

After fighting with American officials to allow them into Iraq, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – a United Nations agency – finally arrive in Baghdad on Friday. The IAEA inspectors will be accompanied by U.S. forces, and there are no plans to expand the limited scope and role of the inspectors to search other suspected nuclear sites.

From http://www.npr.org/news/specials/iraq2003/amos_030605.html

A Question. Why did the US allow the UN back in? Are we worried about the proliferation of nuclear material that may have gotten out? We certainly should be.

This would appear to be an admission of a failing on the part of the US.

[capacitor]

Why so I have the feeling that the intelligence report was written by Jason Blair?

[pantom]

Like, wow. John Dean certainly seems to have a good grasp of the very worst implications of the mendacity of this Admin. If what he says is even half true, I’m going to have to bow down before Diogenes for claiming that Bush would be re-elected despite all this.
I’d certainly be happy to, under those circumstances.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

*Originally posted by pantom *
**Like, wow. John Dean certainly seems to have a good grasp of the very worst implications of the mendacity of this Admin. If what he says is even half true, I’m going to have to bow down before Diogenes for claiming that Bush would be re-elected despite all this.
I’d certainly be happy to, under those circumstances. **

I think you might be confusing me with rexnervous. I don’t think I predicted a Bush reelection, although I’m not entirely confident that the public will hold GeeDubya accountable for this stuff. They never held Reagan accountable either.

[And_that_s_the_bottom_line]

*Originally posted by Diogenes the Cynic *
**When did we confirm that those trailers were “biological labs,” btw? From what I’ve read they show no evidence that they were ever used as labs. The best the WH can say is that they “fit the description” given by informants of possible labs, but they’ve also admitted that they have found no evidence that these particular trailers were ever used a such. They’ve also called these trailers their “best evidence yet” that Iraq had a WMD program. If their “best” evidence is no evidence, I’d have to see what their crap evidence is.

Is this really the best they can do. Are they really going to cling to a couple of empty vans as proof that Iraq had thousands of WMDs and posed an imminent threat to the US?

I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. **

You’re right Diogenes, those trailers have not been found to be chemical labs at all, although that is what Bush is still clinging to as his main evidence. I even addressed this in this thread.

[Desmostylus]

Please stop posting rubbish, And that’s the bottom line. The trailer issue is addressed in this thread.

They are chemical labs/manufacturing facilities. It’s utterly ridiculous to claim that they aren’t.

What GWB claims is that they are biological weapons labs/manufacturing facilities. There’s a significant difference between the two concepts.

[pantom]

Hmm, lemme try that again, Diogenes.
That was me telling you that he’d be re-elected, earlier in this thread. You were arguing that he wouldn’t be.
If Dean is right, obviously he wouldn’t be, and you’d be right, and I’d be wrong.
And I think I should get some rest now.

[rexnervous]

*Originally posted by Diogenes the Cynic *
**I think you might be confusing me with rexnervous. I don’t think I predicted a Bush reelection, although I’m not entirely confident that the public will hold GeeDubya accountable for this stuff. They never held Reagan accountable either. **

I didn’t exactly predict Bush would get re-elected; my point was that I can’t foresee this ‘scandal’ having any major affect on the administration. Other factors could have an affect; most notably, the economy. I do NOT want Bush re-elected btw.

However, now that I have actually read Dean’s article, I can see a fallout in that some members of his administration resign, either out of disgust or being forced out as scapegoats.

But the pessimist in me says that the majority of Americans actually won’t give a damn even if it’s proved that Bush et al flat out lied to all of us. They’ll just say “hey, that’s what you have to do to be a strong leader. And anyway, leave Bush alone, we won the war. What are you, unpatriotic?”