Fresh report from the Observer on the trailers in Iraq.
Remember what GWB said?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60140-2003May30.html?nav=hptop_tb
Lying fucking asshole.
A hyrdogen bomb! Saddam had facilities to make a hydrogen bomb! Which he was going to give to Hannibal Lecter!
Note that GWB was careful to cite ‘the intelligence services’ for their interpretation of the trailers’ function and purpose, so it isn’t strictly fair to call him a liar on that account.
Somebody somewhere needs to feel the public’s collective boot up their arse soon enough though. One wonders if there isn’t someone really high-up in said intelligence services, who’s also a big Halliburton shareholder, pulling all the strings. Or would that be too fantastic?
Like many others worldwide, I’m in the camp that desperately tries to make the distinction between Bush and his power-mad cabal and the “rest of the Americans.” IOW, despise Bush & Co. while giving Americans the benefit of the doubt. But as I read his approval ratings I can’t help but feel a sense of complete disconnect with the ‘average Joe.’
The way I see it, this campaign of lies and deceit has been going on for quite some time now, what with numerous claims made by the Administration clearly refuted before the Iraq invasion – and yet if one is to believe those polls, a majority of Americans, apparently, have no problem with a President who starts a war of aggresion based on false premises and flat out lies.
Truly, I am perplexed.
You have to understand, Red fury,, that the news media in the US are very tightly controlled by only a handful of major corporations. The above story will not be reported on Fox News or CNN. The American media are now strenuously working to re-justify the war purely in terms of “liberating” Iraq and are completely ignoring the official “imminent threat” justification. Americans are also taught from birth that the US can never be wrong, and that questioning our military policy is unpatriotic or even treasonous.
Plus We’re stupid.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
As an American, I cannot stress to you outside the U.S. just how ignorant many Americans are. I am always amazed whenver the American people gets ANYTHING right. Most of them simply do not ever read anything voluntary, and get all their news from the mass media, which as has been noted already, are tightly controlled by a few major corps with conservative leanings.
I have great faith in the fundamental decency of Americans, but their intellectual grasp and their knowledge of the world is … not great.
This just in:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030623-458730,00.html
“After weeks of pressure to explain what it knew about the alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq before launching the war there, the Bush Administration has placed the issue in CIA Director George Tenet’s lap. Administration officials have been subtly pointing the finger in his direction, saying all their knowledge of Iraq’s weapons programs came from Tenet’s agency. That apparently didn’t apply to a British intelligence report, cited by President Bush in his State of the Union speech, that claimed Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from an unnamed nation later identified as Niger. The report has since been discredited, having been based on forged documents. The CIA had, in fact, looked into the report in February 2002 and found it dubious. At first the White House claimed that the CIA, if it had had any reservations about the intelligence, had not communicated them. Then, after other U.S. officials revealed that the CIA had sent a cable to the White House in March 2002 that cast doubt on the Niger report, Bush aides insisted the warning was too vague to raise red flags. Now Bush has put Tenet in the hot seat, placing him in charge of the hunt for the wmd.”
[snip]
"The new assignment offers him a chance to go out either as a hero–or a scapegoat. “The spin is that somebody’s got to be in charge so that it’s being done in an organized fashion,” says an intelligence official. “The more cynical view is that they have handed the whole bag of s___ to him.”
A guy who isn’t willing to fall on his sword for Fearless Misleader…he’s just not a team player, you know?
Frankly, I find the most open, least biased source of news within the U.S. to be the Daily Show.
Enough with the bullshit conspiracy theories, DC. There is not some evil right wing conspiracy controlling the media. Stories questioning the validity of the intelligence, and by extension the administration, have appeared in TIME, Newsweek, and too many newspapers to name. A cursory search also turned up stories on http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/06/09/timep.wmd.tm/index.html]CNN and there’s even a story about hearings on Fox news today. FOX!
True, they may not run this exact British story, but they have questioned and still question the administration’s claims. They’d love for a scandal to develop. A scandal would mean higher ratings.
Really, with all your paranoia regarding the media and the current administration, sometimes you sound as if an aluminum foil deflector beanie is your favorite summertime accesory.
I was being just a little tongue-in-cheek, Monkey. I’m not that paranoid.
Actually, I think it’s a question of emphasis. The TV media will mention it in passing but will not devote the hours of special attention to it as they will to the Laci Peterson case or as they did to Clinton’s blow job or as they did to Shrub’s little airplane stunt (what 'lucy aptly calls the "Gloat On the Boat’).
They will mention that WMDs have not been found, but they will avoid the subject whenever possible and when they do have to talk about it they will spin it as much as they can to shift the blame to the CIA. They will also constantly cite non-sequitors such as the “happiness” of the Iraqi people and polls which show that 70% approve the war so that means it was ok anyway. They will not breathe a word of suspicion that Bush might have lied.
The print media will talk about it but Americans are so aliterate that the printed word doesn’t make a dent anymore.
I wonder if Junior really knows who he’s fucking with this time. I would think that the intelligence community is the last community he’d want to piss off. What other “youthful indiscretions” might suddenly be leaked to the media right around the fall of 2004?
I have a feeling that this is a repeat of the game they played earlier.
Take #1: Keep bringing up 9/11, terrorism, Saddam and Osama at the same time, and even if it’s false, you’ll get 40% of your countrymen believing Saddam was behind 9/11.
Take #2: Find WOMD often enough, and even when each incident is proved false, enough of your countrymen will believe that WOMD were found. I give it another six months before a new poll shows 40% of Americans believe WOMD were found in Iraq.
I wonder what Take #3 will be 
By the time 2004 rolls around 50 percent of Americans will be cheering Bush for personally chasing Osama bin Hussein out of SandNigeria while bravely enduring wave after wave of chemical and nuclear attacks.
So, a British expert said they weren’t biological labs. Some American experts said they were biological labs. Others Americans said they weren’t.
I don’t see how we can tell who’s right. How do we know which experts to believe? Furthermore, the amount of diagreement probably means that it’s hard to tell for sure what the trailers were for. Chances are nobody is lying. Different experts have simply made different judgments.
My own theory is that they were Good Humor Ice Cream trucks.
Show me the fuckin steam lines. Where’s the goddammed pH and oxygen probes ? Where’s the frigging sample port ? Where’s the control panel, or work station controller ? Fermenters have these things ! Whatever it is they found on that truck does not.
-OTOH, I have little idea what a miniaturized anti-hydrogen production facility would look like. Perhaps Saddam co-opted the french into helping him build the worlds first truly efficient weapons of mass destruction 
Well, on the one hand, we have American intelligence experts, stating that the trailers were possibly used for bioweapon production. They conceivably could have even been pressured in some way to come up with results that supported the administration’s line on the trailers.
On the other hand, we have British biological weapons experts, stating that the trailers were not used for bioweapons production at all. Now, they could have conceivably been pressured by their government as well, but the fact that their findings went against the official government line may be telling.
Plus, we have Bush unequivocally declaring that the WMD’s have been found, and these trailers are it.
If they’re really so ambiguous, shouldn’t he hold off until we really know for certain? (Particularly if he’s going to do what Scylla pretends Bush is doing, which is to hold onto his cards until he gets a grand slam.)
Does Denny’s still serve those ?