Dubya's forgery

The BBQ Pit
1

Over 200 years of legitimate government claims gone, thanks to Dubya. I did a search on the SDMB for forgery, and came up with nothing.

This is a serious, major league SNAFU by the United States. For years, the world has relied on information from the United States as factual and, though skewed, based on facts. Foreign policy in the US heavily relies on this truism. It is amazing how much our standing in the world is based on truth.

I’m pissed. This slack jawed prick has done more damage with a few forged documents than 50 years of a cold war. If our intelligence community had one major thing going for it; that was the understanding of the world community that we wouldn’t risk our integrity for short term gains.

Fifty godamn years.

Pissed away by either a careless handling of an agenda, a straight out agenda, or a bungled foreign policy ploy.

GWII has mishandled this issue on so many levels. It drives me crazy. I want to see a live video feed of a missile screaming up Saddam’s sphincter as much as any American. It’s clear our Prez does as well. Our paths diverge on dragging the integrity of the United States through the mud. In this time, when we need the cooperation of countries that aren’t great fans of the U.S., our integrity is one of our most important assets. This story clearly points out a failing of our integrity.

I will agree that it clearly appears that it was a case of sloppiness, and not an intentional plot. The forgery was so pathetic, that nobody even considers it a plot of the CIA or FBI. But the information was used to make a case. The case that was built upon it was a house of cards. Those agencies allowed the information to be used as a basis for war.

The integrity of the United States has been put into question by a sloppy boner for war. This really pisses me off. I supported his dad 110%. We had every reason to go to war in ‘91. The reasons were clear and the evidence, though often skewed, was truthful (Yes, there was a WMD attack in the Kurdish region, it is not clear if it was against the Iranians or the locals, let’s not make this a forum for that, any other evidence for WMD is tenuous)

In light of this sloppy research/forgery, all evidence for war is now put into question.

*I AM AN ADULT! *Give me evidence for war, and I will back you 120%. Make a sloppy case that ultimately turns out to be false, and you will have pissed me off.

I feel that this particular evidence carried a large amount of weight in the Unitred States case for war. I aknowledge that there is a large amount of information that justifies a violent reaction to Saddam, but the fake documents were a linch-pin of the United States case.

Now that this has come to light, will the damage done to the credibility of the United States be beyond repair? Will the Bush administration be forced to drastically change their tact, or will they ignore the news and continur on as if nothing was revealed?

2

Upon reviewing what I wrote, I apologize for the language, I took a legitamite debate and turned it into a pit rant. I will request it be moved from Great Debates to the BBQ Pit. I hope someone will peruse that article and put into words what I was unable to, for I feel that the topic would make for a great debate.

3

There was a GD thread, went silent:

US/British evidence on Iraqi nuclear purchases forged
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=168075

I have been wondering if the American public truly did not care.

4

Not at all. Your language is entirely appropriate to the circumstances.

5

Moderator’s Note: Moving to the Pit at the OP’s request. As linked to by wmfellows above, there is also a GD thread on this.

6

Don’t forget that the UK “evidence” of WMD cited by Powell at the UN was from an 11-year-old PhD thesis, too, and some of it was copied from a magazine.

It stinks to high heaven.

They were always going to have their war - any evidence to justify it was always going to be cosmetic - and they haven’t even managed to do that right.

Hawktards.

7

The so-called “evidence” provided thus far has been laughable. This is more of the same. The “evidence” provided in private to global players has convinced few.

Bush has marketed this poorly. Yes, Saddam is in violation of UN resolutions. No one is seriously trying to argue that point, but 5 or 6 years or whatever it is of ignoring UN resolutions doesn’t seem like a very good case for bombing Iraq into the stone age.

When realizing that more was needed we came to the “evidence”
regarding a real and current threat. There have been so many red herrings: those tubes in Turkey, OBL and his people with the Kurds, OBL high fiving Saddam for standing up the the US, the uranium babble in this post, possibly the Kurdish WMD, ad nausem. I’m sure I’ve left out many more.

But ya, I agree with your OP that this has hurt the US credibility to a very significant degree

8

Did any of you actually read the article?

Oh yeah. REALLY sounds like Dubya himself was up late one night, working with crayons and construction paper, forging the documents.

:rolleyes:

9

I highly doubt these particular forged documents originated in the US. The CIA is really fucking good at faking stuff. The mistakes on the forgeries were so ridiculously stupid I just don’t see how they could be part of some concerted effort at manufacturing evidence on the US’s part. I mean, even the lamest crooks and defrauders can get good at forging signatures, for godsakes.

I think the likliest explanation is some rank amateur in another country’s intelligence service made this stuff up and passed it on to the CIA, which glanced at it and passed it on elsewhere.

10

BTW, I’m not saying that the US government or CIA never forges documents; obviously doing so is a crucial element of spying. I’m just saying I really doubt these particular documents were their work.

11

If they’re so good at doing it, why are they not so flash at picking it up?

12

:smiley: Cracking sentence ! Your perspective of the worlds perspective of a US (administration) perspective of how best it justifies its (naturally) self-serving foreign policy.

13

This OP is part of what really bothers me about the anti-Bush crowd.

Listen, read the article. READ period, Bush did not personally create this forgery. As a matter of fact, general opinion is that it did not originate in the U.S. Yes, someone in the intelligence community dropped the ball and didn’t identify this as a fraud but that does not equate to President Bush’s complicity in attempting to defraud the U.N. with bogus evidence. Same argument for the U.K. dossier. It is unfortunate but really, how was the Bush administration to prevent that from happening? As you implied in the original OP, nations of certain status/reputation tend to trust intelligence is valid when received from like nations.

If you are anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Republican, anti-whatever - at least be intellectually honest in your criticism, mmmm-kay?

Oh, and “Fuck!” (It is the Pit after all)

Mean-Fuckin’-Joe

14

So “strong evidence that Iraq is developing nuclear weapons” is the type of stuff handled by total amateurs in other countries and barely glanced at by our own CIA. Uh, huh. Sure. Makes plenty of sense to me. :rolleyes:

My pulled-out-of-my-ass guess would be that the U.S. wasn’t involved in the actual forgery, but, upon discovering it, decided to just run with the ball and hoped nobody else would notice. And if anyone ever did notice, they could just point to the fact that they weren’t the forgers and call it a simple oversight.

15

Still no word on the mysterious third country which provided the forgery in the first place.

Rumour has it that it came from usually reliable sources in the Republic of Freedonia.

16

Happy to oblige, Mean Joe

Can you still hear the faint echoes in the air, Republicans squeeling in porcine rage? “He lied to the American people!” Oh, the horror, the dismay! Eyes wide with shock, they seized the public by the lapels and hollered until the veins stuck out in thier neck. “He lied…LIED!!!..to the American people!” Bill Bennett, our nations number one scold, put out an entire book: Where is the Outrage, he moaned, pissing himself massively.

With heavy hearts they grimly set in motion the only remedy possible for this unbearable state of affairs. Stern duty demanded that they think the unthinkable: impeachment. Though they shrank in horror from the very word, yet, as men of conscience, men of honor, they could do no less, lest the noble office of President sink into the mire.

“He lied to the American people!”

And now these palladins of truth, defenders of candor and veracity, will go forth to stand firm in thier duty. Setting all partisan politics aside, they gird themselves to do what must be done, however painful, however distasteful.

They will pretend it never happened.

17

Yeah, guys. Whether or not someone in the US forged the documents, the fact is that it was the US that cheerfully passed them off as authentic without even bothering to check, or else bothering to check and then crossing their fingers and hoping nobody else would notice. That reeks.

18

When the debate over war with Iraq first started, many said that they trusted the Bush administration when he said he had evidence that Iraq was working on WMDs that he couldn’t show the public for security reasons.

This is proof that it cannot be trusted, and whether this is because of fraud, or simple incompetence doesn’t matter. The papers had the signature of a man who by then had not been foreign minister of Niger for 14 years. You or I could have caught that mistake using Google, for Christ’s sake.

This is inexcusable, on every level. It would be bad if the issue was, say, a campaign promise. But this is war. I find it horrifying that people continue to trust politicians (any of 'em, right or left) when it comes to issues as serious as this. They have proven time and again the trust is not deserved.

19

I’m not sure whether this counts as a hijack or not but:

Does America have a better reputation for truth internationally than it does with its own citizens? Because there is solid evidence that American Presidents have been lying to US about international affairs dating back AT LEAST to the Eisenhower administration (to be generous).

Remember:

  1. assorted South and Central American military interventions?(Chile, Argentina, Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, and others I’m sure I’m missing)
  2. The Bay of Pigs?
  3. Francis Gary Powers and the U2 incident?
  4. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the next 10 years of the Vietnam fiasco?
  5. trading arms for hostages?
  6. our “neutrality” in Lebanon?
    I can’t say how these things were portrayed in international circles. I can say that there is a LONG domestic history or manufacturing, distorting, or deliberately mis-characterizing evidence to convince the American public to go along with questionable foreign policies.
20

Puts a whole new twist on the Nigerian scam, doesn’t it?