Does anyone have a link to the “25 page document…released as US President George W Bush holidayed at his Texas ranch” that cited in the article mentioned in the OP?
Specifics make all the difference.
“material to build chemical and biological weapons” is very vague. Could be glove boxes, petri dishes and safety goggles.
IIRC, the FBI determined that the equipment necessary to carry out the anthrax attacks could’ve been obtained commercially over the internet for several thousand dollars.
Well, duh, what do you think I linked to? What do you think we’ve been talking about?
**But Powell’s report to the U.N. addresses that, specifically:
**You may still find this less than compelling, but it is not ex post facto, nor would this assertion lead you to think there’d be a great deal of evidence connecting the camp to the Ba’ath party, not based on the connection Powell described (a senior agent who offered safe haven).
They haven’t found much evidence of this type of warfare anywhere in Iraq, though we know it existed. My only point was, and is, that if Powell presented a case prior to the war that this connection, for the purpose of providing this type of assistance, existed, then subsequent supporting evidence (such as an operative’s disclosure) is not ex post facto. You may feel that the evidence is not compelling in either case, but it is consistent.
Look, the OP report may turn out to be specious, but it is consistent with Powell’s address to the U.N., IMO, to the extent that military intellgience can possibly be–i.e., with something less than absolute precision.
Tom, even your first post seems to recognize this (emphasis added):
**Powell’s address was not at all “there was one guy that was part of al Qaida that visited Iraq a couple of years ago,” and it is consistent with the OP’s report. You seem to now want to have independent evidence (e.g., traces of poisons) to support the disclosure made by the operative before you’ll concede this is not ex post facto. I’m not sure why. As I said, you can believe that the “evidence” in both instances is not compelling, but that doesn’t make the second instance a justficiation after the fact. It’s essentially the same as the justification prior to the war. That’s my only point.
And if the report in the OP is bullshit, then the whole thread is pointless.
RedFury, I am not at all getting your Wolfowitz point. Please help me see it.
And Desmostylus, are you sure that’s the 25-page document previously referenced?
Good god. Comprehension skills are limited around here.
Here’s the whole thing:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/100days/100days.pdf (warning, .PDF)
The full title is:
For those not wanting the .PDF version, there’s a HTML version which is broken up into ten parts. My link goes to the first part. Links to the other nine parts are at the bottom of that page.
It’s the White House report that’s specious, i.e. “having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious”.
And of course it’s entirely consistent with Powell’s report to the U.N., because it just repeats exactly the same bullshit, almost word for word. There’s no new evidence. There’s no evidence at all. :wally
I don’t get it. For almost two years, everyone with any perspective has understood that OBL hates Saddam and, since al-Qaeda began occupying areas in the north of Iraq (post-Afhganistan) Saddam hate OBL (if he didn’t already) – don’t get OBL’s support of the Iraqi people confused with his hatred of the dictator.
The New Yorker Dec, 2002 – .pdf format.
*Like other Middle Eastern rulers, Saddam Hussein has long recognized that Al Qaeda and like-minded Islamists represent a threat to his regime. Consequently, he has shown no interest in working with them against their common enemy, the United States. This was the understanding of American intelligence in the 1990’s.
In 1998, the National Security Council assigned staff to determine whether that conclusion was justified. After reviewing all the available intelligence that could have pointed to a connection between
Al Qaeda and Iraq, the group found no evidence of a noteworthy relationship. *
I mean, OBL even lumped Saddam in with the Saud posse. . .
Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein.
Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein.
It’s something that any Arab living in a dictatorship and watching state-run television knows, and it’s a fact that would be apparent to anyone who watched the entire al Qaeda recruitment video, and not just the few-second clips shown on American television. In the video, Saddam is seen reviewing a line of Iraqi army officials. Bin Laden’s voice is heard calling Saddam a false Muslim who “only worships the Ba’ath Party”—Saddam’s ruling party in Iraq. He then goes on to compare Hussein to Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, whom bin Laden despises more than any other Arab leader.”
Yet I see the same old faces – and, for goodness sake, even some new ones - trying to tell us, actually, the sky is green. Surely you must have some newer material ?
Damn, even Sam Stone’s given up on thisa flight of fancy . . .
The Herald Sun cited in the OP is hardly a reputable source, its a low quality Murdoch tabloid newspaper.
**Why don’t you keep your bullshit condescension to yourself?
Yes, genius, and that, by definition would mean that it is not ex post facto, not if the disclosure occurred after the war, not if it is the same evidence that was used prior to the war, and especially not if the operative’s statement is not some bullshit repackaging (which I have conceded I do not know for sure). Talk about a need for enhanced reading comprehension skills.
And thanks for the :wally , since it’s so appropriate in this forum. Just more of your shrill, partisan nonsense, which is always preferable to calm debate.
What exactly is your point, Bob Cos? Is there one?
No-one apart from you is arguing any longer about the ex-post facto nature of the justification.
Such an argument is entirely irrelevant, because the Administration hasn’t found any ex-post justification.
And I love the “shrill partisan nonsense” bit. I’m from another country, but you still think I must be a Dem cheerleader.
Yes, here’s one in particular: your contribution in this thread is discourteous, humorless and shrill. See if you can get your brain around that one. I know this must be hard for you, since you can’t seem to understand an exchange that has taken place since only yesterday, conducted in plain English.
I see. You don’t have any argument about the facts.
I’m “discourteous, humorless and shrill”. I can live with that.
Wave your hands a bit more, maybe the whole thing will go away.
You keep saying that, ace, that’ll make it true.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39500-2003Aug9.html
Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence
This just in…
Yep… if you wanna see something hard enough everything justifies it. Nothing that goes against it is relevant.
Some sort of an 11 page report-lite on whitehouse.gov
Funny you should mention that. Ever heard of the OSP?
Bob Cos writes:
**
I’m afraid we’re at a bit of an impasse here, because as I said in my prior post, I find Wolfowizt’s statement to be self-explanatory.
Here it is, again: "I’m not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it"
Note that this is the same man who also said the following in a Vanity Fair interview a couple of months before:
Now, while some might argue that Mr Wolfowitz (unarguably one of this Administration’s most commited hawks and the main arquitech of the Pax Americana plan sponsored by the PNAC) should be praised for his candor now, others, such as myself, would have greatly appreciated his display of honesty prior to the invasion. Because when you add those two statements together what do you get?
You tell me.
It is true that the claim about the agents who “accompanied” Zarqawi to Baghdad is not, technically, ex post facto, since Powell mentioned it on February 2. On the other hand, the current report simply repeats that claim–never substantiated–with the addition of putting the words in the mouth of some purported captured member of al Qaida. However, the actual claims that Powell made regarding Sagrat (mislabeled Khurmal in his presentation) have turned out to be false–while the adminstration repeats it in their point 8 of the just released report.
Releasing the same apparent lie and attaching it to an anonymous source looks to me as though they are simply trying to drag up new ways to present old lies; adding the “captured informant” is ex post facto.
The Sagrat camp was encircled and captured very quickly. There were reams of documents discovered regarding their training and organization. If they were there “at the invitation” of the Ba’ath party, (which is not known for its “hands off” approach to control of Iraq), there should be evidence of that connection. None has been presented.
Sagrat was not the size of Iraq and the Ansar al-Islam were surrounded by enemies, not friends. If there had been chemical or biological weapon production going on there, it could not have been moved out of the area and some documentation should have remained. None has been found. So the entire section of the U.N. report dealing with Zarqawi appears to have been false, and is now being re-released with a new by-line (attributing it to the purported captive).
Iraq certainly used to have chemical (and, perhaps, biological) weapons. The issue is whether they actually did destroy them or simply hid them. The administration would be better off shutting up until they discover the truth, rather than recycling old lies with fresh paint on them.
I know that Dems and some media have made this the issue, but I don’t see what difference it makes. Either Iraq still had WMDs or they had secretly destroyed them, but without verification of the WMDs’ destruction. Surely American policy had to be based on the former assumption.
If it eventually turns out that the latter was the case, too bad for Saddam and the Ba’ath regime. But, we could hardly plan on all WMDs having been destroyed. Anyhow, WMDs speak more to the timing of the attack. The likelihood that Iraq would continue to develop and deploy WMDs was a continuing risk.
The risk that Hussein would use banned weapons was very small one according to the CIA. How many $100bn+ wars are justified by very small risks?
The American policy did not have to require a multibillion dollar war against a country where the war, itself, forced the disruption of the inspections to find out whether or not Iraq had complied.
Had the U.S. allowed the inspections to continue*, Blix would have either found the evidence or demonstrated to the UN that Iraq was deliberately hiding the evidence. We did not need to go to war at that moment, unilaterally in order to stop Iraq from building or exporting weapons of terror.