You do know that Powell still stands by his claim, right? As I understand it, the main point of concern is that the Iraqis bought the tubes and specified a much higher set of tolerances than those required for rockets. Now, why would a country with money problems spend a lot more money than it has to by demanding extremely high tolerances for a part that they claimed was being used in a rather mundane application?
Note that the people who decided these tubes were destined for a gas centrifuge were analysts at the CIA, not some PR flack in the White House. And by the way, the CIA opinion was also backed by the NSA and the DIA. That’s pretty much the U.S. intelligence trifecta. Powell was reporting the considered opinion of the U.S. intelligence community, not some BS ginned up by Paul Wolfowitz.
The article continues:
Now, unlike your characterization, this article is far more balanced. It goes into specifics of rotor design and construction, and examines the case the administration made. It calls for more information to be made available.
I’m having a hard time matching your characterization of the DOE position with that described in this article. This article says that the DOE claimed that there’s no proof that these tubes were headed for use in a centrifuge. Yours says that the DOE says that they couldn’t be used in a centrifuge. How could the DOE make that claim, when all the information about the tubes was not released?
I would also note that the DOE is not privy to all the intelligence. The agencies that are, (the aforementioned CIA, NSA, and DIA), do not agree with the DOE.
According to the article, this is the CIA’s case:
Note that they are still skeptical, but you can at least see the case the CIA is making. The article then goes on to describe the various ways in which the tubing could have been used, and the information that would be needed to know if in fact it was destined for use in a centrifuge. It concludes:
Note that even if these tubes were not destined for a centrifuge, as potential dual-use items, they were still illegal for Iraq to possess. If they had wanted to use them to to make rockets (which were not banned), why did they go through a clandestine procurement plan? Why not announce the intention to buy rocket tubes, order tubes machined only to the specification required by the rockets, and be aboveboard about the whole thing? And why on earth would a cash-strapped country spend much more money on tubes built to a standard much higher than that required for a rocket casing?
I think a far more fair assessment of the aluminum tube controversy would be, “The CIA claims that they were destined for use in a centrifuge. With the information publically released, such a claim is not proven, although possible. Analysts in other government agencies disagree with the CIA’s assessment, although they are not privy to all the information the CIA has, and the CIA is sticking to their story.”
To me, this sounds like the nature of the intelligence biz. Very few things are known with certainty. You build a case with the evidence you have. That the CIA is more certain about the use of those tubes than other agencies may be because the CIA has classified info on other parts of the program that other analysts do not have. They may have informants who told them where to find the tubes in the first place and what they were intended for. Maybe they had agents measure other pieces and found that hte tubes fit them perfectly. We just don’t know.
But it would be wrong to claim that the administration’s case on aluminum tubing has been refuted. And in any event, the administration did not create this assessment - the CIA did. If the CIA was wrong, I don’t see how that falls on the President. The best he can do is rely on the information given to him by his experts.
ElvisL1ves said:
Maybe. I’m almost through my first coffee this morning, so maybe I’ll understand it now.
So far so good. I agree with this. I demand evidence as well. When an administration leads a country to war, it had damned well be certain of its actions. If you were to stop here, I would be with you 100%.
And the logical train just derailed. This is a positive statement. The evidence isn’t there, and we already know they were lying. THIS is the statement I would like some support for. How do we know that? Is there some rule somewhere that says if evidence isn’t found within three months it is impossible for it to exist?
And of course, you’re completely ignoring the fact that the administration says it HAS evidence. Mountains of it. The case is being prepared and vetted as we speak, and should be released to the public in September. Given that, how can you make the bold claim that we already know without doubt that the administration was lying?
Of course there is. We don’t understand yet what happened before the war. We do know that his behaviour is totally inconsistent with that of someone with nothing to hide. We do know that the intelligence communities of every major government believed that he had WMD. The mystery now is what happened to them. And that’s what it is - a mystery. Everyone thought they were there, and now we can’t find them. For you to take that to mean that it is impossible that they were ever there is a truly stunning leap of logic. I would like to know what makes you so sure. I’d like some support for this positive assertion.
It’s beyond me how anyone can soldier-on with the official reasons for war at this late date. However if you still believe that Iraq was an “imminent threat with ties to Al Quada,” I’d like to meet with you about some ocean front property in Bolivia I have for sale.
In all honesty, it is a terrific investment, but not completely without risk. See, I have no way of proving “with 100% certainty” that Bolivia doesn’t have WMDs or ties with Al Quada. Because we all know that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” So no refunds on account of that.
While some of you think about my Bolivian schem…er, offer, I leave you with the following gem – almost randomly picked, there are so many in this war marketing campaign:
Since you’re posting here, it is safe to assume you have an Internet connection. That being the case, please point your browsers to the International Atomic Energy Comission website so you can see the relevance of the above statement in February of 2003. After doing so, ask yourselves what possible intention could the White House have had to include said statement in the SOTU.
Well referenced and detailed explantions on many more fibs and exaggerations told by the Administration at BUSH LIES. If you’re still a member of The Faithful® after reading that site, plese, please call me about Bolivia. I’m sure we’ll do business.
For pity’s sake. Let’s start with Nigerien uranium, shall we? Remember that?
Read carefully: They said they knew things that they could not have known at the time they said them. Read that again a few more times if it still isn’t clear.
And every prisoner on death row says he’s innocent, or was railroaded. Your reference for the statements being true is that of the person making the statement. Your proof that the liar is actually telling the truth is that the liar himself says so. Why? Do you really not see the problem with that approach?
Read this carefully, too: There was no imminent threat to the US’s security, and no basis to believe Saddam and Osama were linked. None could be honestly inferred from the information available at the time. We did discuss that, extensively. Yet people are dying every day because of it.
I’m getting pretty damn sick of your constant mischaracterizations of what you’ve been repeatedly and carefully told, and I’m certainly not the only one here. One thing that is not possible is for me to give you any more credit any longer for discussing the issue in good faith.
Okay, read this slowly and repeatedly, too: Nobody is saying, or ever has AFAIK, that there couldn’t have been any WMD’s, or ever has. For you to say so, knowing otherwise, is a lie of the most stupid and useless kind. I, for one, repeatedly said that there could well be some encrusted barrels in the sand, but it still wouldn’t constitute a good enough reason to send people to their deaths. But, the case for war had to be about an imminent threat to US security. The evidence for that was not there, and is not there, and you have no factual basis for believing it will ever be there, despite your touching quasi-religious faith in Kay’s papers instead of what’s actually been found on the ground. That, as you may know, is bupkis.
If anything is still unclear to you, please say so. Now, for an exercise in honest debate methods, please repeat that in your own words. And remember, the burden of evidence is yours.
Sure do. I also remember that the administration’s claim was that Iraq was attempting to buy Uranium from some nations in Africa. Niger wasn’t mentioned once. That document was only one piece of information used to bolster that claim.
I also note that British intelligence STILL stands by their claim. Now, the media tried to play up the Niger forgery as being the administration’s whole case, and they kept repeating that those ‘16 words’ were about Niger. They weren’t. For a good overview of how this story has been spun, try this article from The Daily Howler. Which, by the way, is no friend of the Bush administration. But they are fair.
Such as? Maybe I’m missing something obbvious here, but I didn’t see anything in your message which showed that. What did they claim they knew which they couldn’t possibly have known?
Hey, I’m not taking the administration’s word on this. They say they are preparing their case. My attitude is, “Fine. I’ll withhold judgement until you present it.” You think that’s unreasonable? Even death row inmates can get appeals if they present a good enough case.
I guess that depends on your definition of ‘imminent’. If you take that to mean that Saddam didn’t have bombers fueled up and ready to attack America, I’d agree. On the other hand, if ‘imminent’ means that, left unchecked, Saddam could at any time provide things like Vx and Anthrax to terrorists, or smuggle a dirty bomb into the U.S., then I don’t see how you’ve disproven that. As for al-Qaida connections, there is still much dispute over that, and I believe that is also part of David Kay’s presentation. We’ll have to wait and see.
There you go again. Nothing has been found on the ground, so the case is closed, huh? And I like how you characterize possible buried WMD as being some ‘encrusted barrels’. Makes them sound old and useless, huh? Of course, others could characterize it like this: “Saddam, the Amicans are coming!” “Okay, then take the weapons we had earmarked for transport to Jordan for our allies in group XXX, and bury them where they won’t be found.”
The nature of WMD is such that it is very difficult to tell if a threat was ‘imminent’, because you don’t need a huge infrastructure or long-term preparations to use them. A canister of Vx could have been a remnant of an old program, or it could have been about to be loaded onto a freighter to be released in downtown New York. It’s very difficult to tell which just by looking at the canister. So you need other intel - preferably documentation as to intent, or informants. Sounds like that’s what Kay is working on. Why don’t we wait and see what he’s got?
And you keep repeating that the burden of evidence is mine. My claim is that we should wait for that evidence, since it seems that the administration is getting close to releasing it. What more do you want?
And I repeat - if you’re going to make categorical claims about what the administration could not possibly know, then the burden of proof is on YOU to show how you know that.
Redfury: The Bush Lies! cite repeats the same erroneous claim that Bush’s SOTU speech referred specifically to Niger, when it didn’t. That makes some of their other claims suspect. Plus, the highly partisan nature of the site makes it a poor resource without looking at the source documents.
HOWEVER, I did go to the IAEA site and attempt to find the documents the Bush administration said showed that the IAEA claimed the Iraqis were rebuilding their nuclear program. I couldn’t find them, and in fact found lots of material that contradicts that claim. It seems to me that the IAEA position is that, A) The Iraqis had largely dismantled their nuclear program, B) had no current way to enrich uranium, and C) Still retains the technical expertise to re-start their programs (of course - the scientists are still there - not Iraq’s fault).
So it looks like we have the best example so far of misleading information on the administration’s part. Thank you. That’s a lot better than the handwaving I’m getting from ElvisL1ves.
May I ask if you read the article I linked to? How do you respond to it? Did you, by any chance, notice the date it was written?
I ask only because I can’t help but notice that the link you provide was last updated on Oct. 9, 2002. A great deal has happened since then. Among other things, two days after Powell’s address the IAEA stated flatly that “Based on available evidence, the IAEA team has concluded that Iraq’s efforts to import these aluminum tubes were not likely to have been related to the manufacture of centrifuges.” Since then, this consensus has grown. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has stonewalled.
But mostly, as far as I can tell, your objections are simply a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. In fact, most of the article you cite disputes the claim that the tubes are suitable for use in gas centrifuges – even the sections you quote gainsay this conclusion. For example, as you point out, the article states:
It is worth noting, in this context, that Powell was using the tubes to support his argument that Iraq was close to producing a nuclear weapon. Your report states clearly that one cannot draw such an inference. Yet you quote it to support your argument?
Basically, the administration has produced a misleading set of claims and then stuck to them; determining the truth of those claims has been relegated to administration outsiders. A difficult task against a disingenuous opponent, to be sure. How can I prove to you with 100% certainty that those tube weren’t purchased for use in the enrichment of uranium? I can prove it to maybe 80% certainty – your claims don’t make sense, and there are other explanations which do make sense – or maybe 90% certainty – this is the consensus of the vast majority of specialist in the field – but 100%? Such a requirement is impossible to meet.
But do you really wish to argue that because there exists, let us say, a 3% chance that the tubes were really what the administration claimed they were, this chance strongly supports your assertion that Bush hasn’t lied? Isn’t it more reasonable, in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, to suspect that he has lied, and to call him to task for it?
Specifically:
You must now explain to me why Iraq would go to the expense to order aluminum tubes to such a high standard of precision, as Powell claimed, only so that they could then cut them and “thin” their walls. Why not order them to the specifications they required, and claim they were for use in rockets? Why go to such great expense to order tubes that are too thick and too long to be used as centrifuge rotors? Since the expensive specifications Powell refers to aren’t consistent with such rotors, why does he claim that the specifications support his contention?
But of course, I still haven’t proven that Powell was wrong to 100%, have I?
Powell cites the existence of an anodized coating on the tubes as if it supported his contention that they were intended for use as centrifuges. It sounds damning enough, but in fact, the coating actually argues against his claims, since such a coating is unnecessary for centrifuges and, in fact, makes them less effective.
But of course, I still haven’t proven that Powell was wrong to 100%, have I?
These statements gainsay Powell’s claim that the tubes were in some way “unique” because of their specifications. They appear to be quite standard items used in the production of ballistic missiles. The CIA has failed to produce a single shred of evidence that they are anything other than that. The evidence they have produced has been dismissed as far-fetched by the vast majority of experts on the subject.
But of course, I still haven’t proven that Powell was wrong to 100%, have I?
In his SOTU address, Bush makes no reference whatsoever to the fact that the use of the tubes is in dispute. His statements are purposefully misleading, and for any non-specialist listening to his speech it sounds as if Iraq is trying to acquire the equipment necessary for building nuclear bombs. Bush makes this claim fully aware that the real purpose of the tubes is under dispute, and that the preponderance of evidence thus far presented gainsays his statement.
But of course, I still haven’t proven that Bush was wrong to 100%, have I?
On the contrary, possession of the tubes was banned. Iraq could not possibly have bought them openly.
The fact that they were illegal for Iraq to possess, never in dispute, does not have any bearing whatsoever on the allegation that they were for use as rotors or centrifuges in a covert weapons program. Bush did not claim in the SOTU that Iraq possessed illegal aluminum tubes that were being used to build rockets; nor did we go to war over something so mundane.
Reread your report; it clearly states that experts believed the tubes were designed for use in a rocket, and that the standards were not “much higher than that required for a rocket casing.”
Oh, that old chestnut again? But, before the war, wasn’t it you who wrote, regarding Powell’s speech:
And now all that “hard evidence” has just evaporated, Sam? The tubes, did you include them under the category of “hard evidence,” or were they just another example of one of those things that aren’t “known with certainty”? Why weren’t you explaining to us that these thing couldn’t be know with certainty back then, instead of trying to convince that the evidence was so overwhelmingly compelling?
*Well, certainly not to 100%, anyway.
Is, or is not, Bush himself personally responsible for the contents of his State of the Union address?
But look: don’t take my word for it. Since you’re so fond of ISIS, let’s fast forward a bit and see what they have to say a few months after your report, in March of 2003:
For even more damning evidence against the administration, please refer to the linked article, which I highly recommend.
At some point, after an intensive search for evidence, the failure to find any becomes a fact by itself. That’s where we’re at. You seem to want to withhold judgment until Judgment Day itself to avoid facing that. Tell us, if the Kay stuff doesn’t prove diddly either (which is what I’m betting on), what will you pin your hopes on then? And what after that? What comes after “Fool me three times” and up?
You ain’t got diddly to back up your absolute faith in the Bush Administration. You must know it. You’re now resorting to simply hoping for something to show up to bail you out. That’s OK, but not when you go on to denounce those with views that are based on fact.
Re the Nigerien uranium claim, I can’t believe you’re resorting to trying to prop it up based on a claim that Bush never actually said the word “Niger” (perhaps there was a fear that he’d mispronounce the word in his script?). There was and is no evidence of any uranium sale at all, from there or anywhere else in Africa or anywhere else at all. Bush told something he knew, or should have known, to be untrue. Your refusal to accept that is simply obtuse. And it’s simply the most mundane example, the first and most obvious example of what you refuse to see.
This priceless gem can’t go unnoticed:“And I repeat - if you’re going to make categorical claims about what the administration could not possibly know, then the burden of proof is on YOU to show how you know that.”
You share december’s view of burden of proof, in which it always rests on the other guy and never yourself. No, friend, Bush said certain things were true, he and his supporters bore the burden of proving it, and collectively they’ve failed on every single friggin’ count. Everything they said, other than that Saddam was/is a prick, has either had no real evidence to back it up or has been actively disproven or has been shown to be a gross exaggeration or an actual fabrication. Every friggin’ thing. That’s how we “know that”, and how you must too.
Well, I was going to reply to Sam Stone’s latest insubstantial reply to my previous message, but considering how much he’s gotten smacked around since, anything I write now would be rather redundant…
(Though I still find it ridiculously laughable the assertion that Saddam “The Butcher of Baghdad” Hussein decided to destroy all of his WMDs on the eve of the American invasion, instead of actually using the damn things.)
See, this is what I hate about this place. Mr. Svinlesha disputes some evidence that I present. That’s fine. But then the chorus of voices pops up (like rjung there), claiming that I’ve been ‘smacked around’ and therefore there’s no point to any further debate.
This has happened more than once, and it’s infuriating. I leave a message, and the next day when I come home from work I find a rebuttal, which is fine, but then about 20 messages going much futher than the rebuttal in claiming that the rebuttal means that the case is closed, there is no point to further discussion, Sam is totally wrong, etc. ad nauseum. Then if I attempt to rebut the point, people pop up to say that I’m wasting my time because at least a dozen people showed me how wrong I was the first time.
My advice to you, rjung, and also to ElvisL1ves, is that if you don’t actually have anything factual to add to the debate, that you keep your bloody little scorecards and attaboys PRIVATE. We really don’t need comments like that last one. They just add noise and distort the debate. They also violate the ‘don’t be a jerk’ rule.
Mr. Svinlesha: I’m aware of the evidence on the other side of the aluminum tubes issue. Hell, I quoted it, to make sure I was being fair. I pointed out in my own message that the cite I quoted was skeptical.
However, there is some confusion between the various cites we’re talking about, which I think may be due to the fact that there were multiple shipments, with different tubes in each. For example, you quoted the part about the 7000-series aluminum, but the cite clearly said that the second shipment contained 6000-series aluminum, and it was this shipment that raised the suspicions of the intelligence community. Also, the exact dimensions of the tubing in the second shipment were not released, as far as I know, so the conclusion that the tubes were the wrong size were from the first, and different shipment.
And you’ll note that the conclusion of the cite I posted was: **These attempted procurements do show that Iraq may have accelerated its efforts to obtain banned items. Despite the lack of evidence linking the tubes to centrifuges, these procurements have increased suspicions about Iraq’s nuclear efforts. **
Now, in the interim, if more information has come to light to make the aluminum tubes-as-centrifuge-parts less likely, that’s fine. Did the administration know it then?
And once again, I’d point out that the information about the tubes was not constructed by the administration - it was the conclusion of the CIA, NSA, and DIA. How can you fault an administration for relying on information from its own intelligence agencies, even if that information later turns out to be false?
Oops! Sorry about that guys - I was posting on my wife’s laptop, and didn’t realize that she had logged onto the board in the recent past.
Treat that last message as from ‘Sam Stone’. If the mods can change it, that would be great.
ElvisL1ves:
Well, that’s where we would be at if all the leads were dead. But isn’t it premature to say that, given that David Kay has a huge team in Iraq, and they say they have made ‘significant finds’ that will ‘surprise everyone’, and that the material is now being laboriously vetted and closed hearings are being given to Congress? Do you just wave this away because it’s ‘too late’?
Shouldn’t we at least wait until this evidence is brought to light?
No, I just want to wait until we get some answers. If Kay’s report turns out to be bogus, then that’d be pretty good for me, unless other significant information comes to light. I don’t see why there has to be a hard deadline on this. Or rather, I’ll give you a hard deadline - the next election. The Bush administration has until then to satisfy the public that it has acted prudently. After that, it won’t matter.
I don’t have absolute faith in the Bush Administration. I’m very skeptical. Events on the ground have not panned out the way I expected them to, based on the information given before the war. I want answers.
However, it’s a far cry from my position to yours, which is that they are a bunch of lying bastards who obviously deceived the public and invaded a country on false pretenses. We just don’t know if that is true at this point. You’re an athiest, and I’m an agnostic. That’s what it boils down to. And that’s fine. I think my position is more rational. I want evidence. You’ve already convicted them out of court.
I’d like a cite for that. British intelligence sticks by its assessment that Iraq was trying to buy Uranium in Africa. So does the CIA. The Niger document was just one piece of evidence among many. The CIA recommended to Bush that he not mention the Niger connection specifically, because they felt the document did not meet the standards of evidence befitting a State of the Union address. They had no problem with the general statement about attempted purchases in Africa, because that was their intelligence assessment.
But note the caution of the CIA here. There are lots of cases where they cautioned the administration against using evidence that wasn’t rock solid, and the administration therefore didn’t use it. Doesn’t that suggest that they feel that most of their evidence that was used IS rock solid?
Wrong. The burden of proof is on the Bush Administration to back up their claims about WMD. No question.
But when you make categorical statements like, “There was and is no evidence of any uranium sale at all, from there or anywhere else in Africa or anywhere else at all.”, then the burden of proof shifts to you to back up that statement. Show me the debunking of ALL the African evidence. Show me that the CIA relied solely on the Niger document.
On the other hand, if you were to take a more reasonable approach, and say, “The Bush administration has not proven its case, and time is running out”, then I would agree with you, and the burden of proof would remain where it belongs - on the Bush administration. That’s the danger of going overboard in criticism - it puts the spotlight on you instead of the people you are criticising.
The Center for Cooperative Research does for cites what Godzilla does for lizards. I would go further than Werewolf of London’s rather tepid “Highly recommended”. I wish I could seize you by the brain stem and drag your eyeballs to the page! READ THIS CITE!! At once! No hesitation will be tolerated! You there! Put down that beer and click that link! Gimmee that bong, thats not good for you. I’ll guard it while you check that cite site.
But, Sam Stone, the astounding thing is that it takes a “huge team in Iraq” and “laborious” vetting to produce the evidence that should have been needed to wage preemptive war in the first place. This is surely a strange sequence of events. Wasn’t strong evidence “brought to light” for GW, Wolfowitz, Powell et al in advance of the war? Wasn’t the “evidence” laboriously vetted before the war was started, or did GW just go to preemptive war on the spur of the moment?
And is this supposed evidence being vetted by the same group that did the vetting of the attempt to purchase uranium portion of the State of the Union Speech?
"1950s. The use of aluminum for rotors in centrifuges was discontinued. Other materials, such as maraging steel and carbon fiber, were used instead. [Washington Post, 8/10/03]"
Well dang ! It don’ mean ole Saydam weren’t trying ta double-bluff, now do it ?
Suggest you sign up for the e-mail on that site if you haven’t already 'luci.
And if you’d read the cite I posted, it specifically says that Saddam had been trying to use the more advanced materials, especially carbon fiber, but that Iraq had run into significant technical difficulties with it.
When you’re starting out your own nuke program, sometimes the earliest and crudest methods work the best. Just like when people first started building homebuilt aircraft, they don’t run out and build the latest titanium wonder-machines - they build airplanes out of wood and fiberglass.
Sam, I agree with you that it’s premature to say either “Bush is a lying sack of shit” or “These small poles are actually all the proof we need”…
However, I would like to know, how long do you think we should wait? Obviously, this time next year will be too late, purely for the political shitfest we’re going to have.
Well, there are several definitions for ‘long enough’.
When the administration runs out of plausible leads.
When we get enough evidence to show that the administration’s claims were bogus.
The next election.
In practical terms, I’d say that this David Kay presentation would provide a good litmus test. That means September, in all likelihood. Either that presentation will be an open-and-shut case for the administration, or it will be tantalizing enough to leave the door open, or it will show the administration backpedaling from their earlier claims. But after that presentation, I believe we will be all be in a much better position of understanding.
Again though, if WMD are not found, and if the best the Kay presentation can come up with is some scattered early-stage ‘weapons programs’, then I would consider that a repudiation of the intelligence that led up to the war. But that does not mean the Bush administration lied, because the intelligence did not come from the Bush administration - it came from the supposedly independent intelligence services of the U.S. So if the Kay presentation does not validate the President’s claims in a significant way, then I would call for a congressional hearing into the process that led to the start of the war. A bipartisan commission made up of current and ex governmental figures from both parties would be idea. People like Sam Nunn, who is a Democrat but a highly respected man who has full security clearances, but who is also out of power and has no axes to grind, would be a perfect chairman for such a position. Put former President Clinton on it, too.
This is important because if the President’s case is not made with satisfaction to the world, it will undermine the faith others put in the U.S. intelligence services, and that will make it very hard to gain support for wars in the future when it’s really needed. Say, against North Korea or possibly Iran. So it’s in the security interests of the United States to either find those WMD, or find out EXACTLY where the screw-up happened.
So, to sum up… Wait for the Kay report. If it does not fully exonerate the President’s intelligence, start a major Congressional investigation. Fair enough?
