elf6c
August 8, 2003, 6:10pm
1
Headline from Yahoo: Bush Team Kept Airing Iraq Allegation
Citey Cite:
Currently the number 3 news item on Yahoo’s main page (sorry Apoligistas people appearantly still care about being lied to):
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1803&e=20&u=/washpost/20030808/pl_washpost/a31496_2003aug7
Since last month, presidential aides have said a questionable allegation, that Iraq had tried to buy African uranium for nuclear weapons, made it into President Bush’s State of the Union address because of miscommunication between the CIA and Bush’s staff.
But by the time the president gave the speech, on Jan. 28, that same allegation was already part of an administration campaign to win domestic and international support for invading Iraq. In January alone, it was included in two official documents sent out by the White House and in speeches and writings by the president’s four most senior national security officials.
Oops turms out it wasn’t just 16 words and one speech. Oh darn, 3 scapegoats later and ton of contradictory spin attempts later, a believable story still remains elusive.
The article details how the claim was stricken twice from administration speeches for being unreliable. But when crunch time came, the truth took a back seat I guess and the Bush Administration “forgot” about the story being removed twice from speeches.
Who else made those claims- read them and weep:
Yet in the days before and after the president’s State of the Union address, the allegation was repeated by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and in at least two documents sent out by the White House.
The story carefully lists dates and what they said. Oh well, back to the spin factory I guess.
Well at least Bush does twist the facts outside of Iraq and effort of the massive tax cuts of the deficit and the economy- right? Wrong.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31318-2003Aug7.html
Others had called shenagingans on Bush’s frequent tall tales as well:
Several prestigious scientific journals have editorialized about the Bush administration’s dealings in science in recent months, including Science, Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine.
An editor at Science, for example, recently said in print that the administration was injecting politics into arenas of science “once immune to this kind of manipulation.”
And the editors of the Lancet noted “growing evidence of explicit vetting of appointees to influential [scientific] panels on the basis of their political or religious opinions” and warned against “any further right-wing incursions” on those panels.
Plenty of specific example listed in the article and link below. Click’em and weep.
Read the whole report at:
www.politicsandscience.org
Let’s start the countdown for the first Apoligista drive-by.
:dubious:
I bet this will lead to a new December pit thread.
Kal
August 8, 2003, 6:56pm
4
Blah, blah, bleeding heart blah blah blah.
Blah, blah liberal, blah.
Blah, peacenik, blah, blah, blah blah traitor, blah.
Un-American, blah blah, blah.
Blah, blah, blah HE KILLED CUTE, FUZZY KITTENS!!
Blah, blah.
FUZZY KITTENS!!
Blah.
Hail Bush.
You forgot “Gassed his own people”
elf6c
August 8, 2003, 8:16pm
7
Funny thing about that:
WASHINGTON – A covert American program provided Iraq with critical assistance in its war with Iran at a time when American intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons, the New York Times reported Sunday.
American intelligence officers never encouraged or condoned Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, but neither did they oppose it because they considered Iraq to be struggling for its survival, people involved at the time said in interviews with the newspaper.
Some U.S. military officers agreed to speak on the condition that they not be identified about the nature of gas warfare on both sides of the Iraq-Iran conflict from 1981 to 1988.
The Pentagon “wasn’t so horrified by Iraq’s use of gas,” said one veteran of the program. “It was just another way of killing people — whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn’t make any difference,” he said.
Iraq’s use of poison gas is repeatedly cited by President Bush as one of the justifications for “regime change” in Iraq.
Cite:
Newsmax.com reports today’s news headlines, live news stream, news videos from Americans and global readers
seeking the latest in current events, politics, U.S., world news, health, finance, and more.
Seem the story started in the NY Times:
While senior officials of Reagan government revealed lately that although US intelligence institution knew clearly that Iraq would use chemical weapons, it still passed a secret program to aid Iraq.
The New York Times reporters got the news from former US officials when investigating the war’s truth during 1981 to 1988. Most of the officials declined to give names.
Anonymous former officials said that Reagan’s assistants on the one hand condemned Iraq’s behavior while on the other launched the secret program actively.
NY Times: US Acquiesces in Use of Poison Gas During Iran-Iraq War (citing the NY Times article)
And it most likely was Iran, not Iraq that used chemical weapons on the Kurds (oops, damn nasty facts):
In our book Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East we questioned whether Iraq had used chemicals against its Kurdish population, as widely believed. Your reviewer (Edward Mortimer, “Republic of Fear,” NYR, September 27) challenged us on this. Since it is a matter of some importance, we would like to offer support for our view. Essentially there are two instances under scrutiny. The first attack allegedly occurred at Halabjah in north-central Iraq. All accounts of this incident agree that the victims’ mouths and extremities were blue. This is consonant with the use of a blood agent. Iraq never used blood agents throughout the war; Iran did. The U.S. State Department said at the time of the Hallabjah attack that both Iran and Iraq had used gas in this instance. Hence, we concluded it was the Iranians’ gas that killed the Kurds.
and
Second, at the termination of the Iran-Iraq war, professors Stephen Pelletiere and Leif Rosenberger, and Lt Colonel Douglas Johnson of the US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds.
. . . Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemical weapons in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds.” [The Iranians thought the Kurds had fled Halabjah and that they were attacking occupying Iraqi forces. But the Iraqis had already vacated Halabjah and the Kurds had returned. Iran gassed the Kurds by accident]
But what would the Army War College know?
http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/GaseousLies.htm
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/2002/sep02/Thomas.htm
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/THO209A.html
elf6c
August 8, 2003, 8:23pm
8
Damn even the Cato institute is mocking the WMD misteps. This is a partically well written piece btw:
Writing in the LA Times, Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations ponders why Hussein was so uncooperative “in light of the postwar failure to find any WMD stockpiles.” He offers just two explanations: Either Saddam “destroyed his stockpile” or “we’ll still find it.”
A third explanation is that some weapons that were supposed to make Iraq a formidable military threat never existed, such as UAVs or missile warheads loaded with biological agents. Others, such as capacity to produce biological and chemical precursors, were never weapons. The rest, as the CIA put it, was based on “limited insight into activities since 1998,” including speculations from private analysts (Tony Blair’s dossier reportedly relied heavily on Jane’s Intelligence Report). “All intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons,” wrote the CIA. But seeking is not having, and intelligence experts are not necessarily intelligent.
I see no value in Senate committees “investigating” the WMD rationale for the Iraq war. The senators should have read the CIA report last October, and not just the summary. What remains vitally important today, however, is to understand that the hyping of WMD by the CIA and others has been dangerous to homeland security.
http://www.cato.org/dailys/06-22-03.html
Dang, cited to Newsmax and the Cato Institute in the same day. So much for liberal media sources.
elf6c , with each post you write, Al-Qaeda votes for a different Democrat congressman!
Dontcha know?
"Saddam Bin Laden’s eeeeeeeviil ! "
Repeat as often as needed while covering eyes, ears, and simultaneously wiggling out your tongue. Takes a bit of getting used to, but I assure you that the shame eventually departs and your life will get much easier as the urge to think on your own slowly fades into nothing but a distant memory.
Ask december.
pantom
August 9, 2003, 12:05am
11
More proof that in war, truth is the first casualty.
Note to self: suggest promotion of Comrade elf6c to be Minister of Information for SDMB People’s Revolutionary Front (Trotskyist).
Note to elucidator : do not suggest promotions regarding the Ministry of Information and Public Interest Documents in the SDMB forum. Keep them to alt.trotskyist.ministry-IPID forum or, if ABSOLUTELY necessary, private email on the listserv (CC to Hussein, ObL, et al.).
Recommend elucidator receive a formal strict verbal exchange with Comrade ElvisL1ves re: above information.
