What is Nancy Pelosi'a stated reason(s) for taking Impeachment off the table?

Great Debates
101

Yep.

From CNN:
Obeidi told CNN the parts of a gas centrifuge system for enriching uranium were part of a highly sophisticated system he was ordered to hide to be ready to rebuild the bomb program.
“I have very important things at my disposal that I have been ordered to have, to keep, and I’ve kept them, and I don’t want this to proliferate, because of its potential consequences if it falls in the hands of tyrants, in the hands of dictators or of terrorists,” said Obeidi, who has been taken out of Iraq with the help of the U.S. government.
Obeidi also said he was not the only scientist ordered to hide that type of equipment.
“I think there may be more than three other copies. And I think it is quite important to look at this list so they will not fall into the hands of the wrong people,” he said.
The parts, with accompanying plans, were unearthed by Iraqi scientist Mahdi Obeidi who had hidden them under a rose bush in his garden 12 years ago under orders from Qusay Hussein and Saddam Hussein’s then son-in-law, Hussein Kamel.

Kamel was killed by Saddam for blowing the whistle.

From The 60 minutes report on the interrogation of Saddam:

(CBS) In fact, Piro says Saddam intended to produce weapons of mass destruction again, some day. “The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” Piro says.

“And that was his intention?” Pelley asks.

“Yes,” Piro says.

“What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?” Pelley asks.

“He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire WMD program,” says Piro.

“Chemical, biological, even nuclear,” Pelley asks.

“Yes,” Piro says.

102

Why don’t you answer the question I asked? What was he supposed to do with the scientists?

103

What part of “YEP” don’t you understand?

104

Look, Magiver, the fact is that a giant pile of uranium ore, a few second-rate scientists, and some plans you downloaded from UseNet aren’t enough to build a nuclear weapon.

The really really hard part of building a nuclear bomb is enriching the U-235. And you just can’t do it in the back of a truck.

In one sense you’re right. If we had left Saddam in place in 2003, and didn’t bother to keep the pressure up with the inspectors, he might have decided to try to restart his nuclear program. But with even modest pressure, we could have kept the inspectors in Iraq, chasing after a few trucks with the aforementioned dot-matrix printouts from UseNet.

And I can understand the notion that the inspectors were being led around by the nose, and Saddam was keeping all his good stuff hidden, and the inpectors were pretty much incompetant. That was a defensible argument…in 2003.

The trouble is, after the invasion we’ve been all over Iraq, and we found a bunch of useless crap. We didn’t find a nuclear weapons program that had been hidden from the inspectors. It’s true there could have been such a program, but if there was such a program it was so well hidden that after 5 years of occupation we still haven’t found anything new of any significance.

Which means that Saddam really did abandon his nuclear program. Because building a nuclear bomb is hard, and costs money, and he had more urgent priorities like massacring the Shiites. If he had been left to his own devices and was free to fulfil his dreams, he would have loved to have a nuke or two, sure. But just because he wished he had a nuke doesn’t mean he had one.

And anyway, the reason Pelosi isn’t pursuing impeachment is obvious: 49 Republican Senators. Unless you get 16 Republican Senators to vote to remove Bush from office, the whole thing is a waste of time. And you’d have to simulpeach, otherwise you’ve just got President Cheney.

105

I have things to do so you can do your own research but you can read what his Son in Law said before Saddam killed him.

At first, Hamza said, he was seduced by well-paid employment at a civilian center in Baghdad that researched the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But after a year on the job, government agents presented him with another offer he couldn’t refuse: a senior post on the secret team working to build a nuclear bomb. Refusal was never an option, as he understood after his first face-to-face encounter with Saddam. During an unannounced inspection of his new office, Saddam suddenly exploded in anger at Hamza for a seemingly harmless oversight - not framing some pictures of eminent scientists that had been tacked up on a wall outside his office.

Hamza says he and his fellow scientists were unwilling participants in the clandestine bomb program, kept in line by Saddam's punishments and rewards. He says Saddam ordered colleague after colleague dragged off to jail and severely beaten for failing to produce results. After their release, they would be placated with gifts of cash, cars and houses, "as if nothing had happened."

With those grim images in his mind, Hamza focused all his energies on developing the bomb. He led secret missions to Europe and the former Soviet Union to acquire bomb technology, carefully covering his tracks to avoid assassination by Israeli agents. On trips to the United States, he was able to glean invaluable guidance by studying scientific journals and technical accounts of America’s bomb effort, all of which were open to scholars. Even Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor failed to halt the program. If anything, Hamza says, it moved it into high gear as Saddam defiantly poured billions of dollars into the effort and threatened more torture for any scientist who faltered.

Over the next decade, Hamza says, he reaped lavish rewards - new cars, money, membership in Baghdad’s exclusive Hunting Club - as he climbed the ranks to director of weaponization. Thanks to Hamza’s efforts, Iraq stood only a few months away from building a nuclear device when the allies began bombing during the gulf war.

Finally, in 1993, two years after the war ended, the body of a senior nuclear procurement officer was found in a ditch, prompting Hamza to begin to plot his escape. But it was not until 1994 that he was able to slip out of Baghdad into the “no-fly zone” in northern Iraq, controlled by opposition groups with connections to the C.I.A. There, using an opposition leader’s encrypted telephone, he contacted C.I.A. headquarters outside Washington to announce his readiness to defect. To Hamza’s utter dismay, however, the C.I.A. turned down his offer. Now he was stranded, the clock ticking on how soon Saddam would notice his absence.

106

Wait, he was supposed to kill his pet nuclear physicists?

Sure, Saddam would kill anyone who tried to thwart his ambitions. Any nuclear physicist that tried to expose his plans would be signing his own death warrant.

But that’s not what Ravenman is asking. He’s asking, given that Saddam had a couple nuclear physicists in Iraq, what would have to happen to those people for you to consider Iraq’s nuclear program defunct? Would Saddam have to send all those people to live abroad, or execute them, before you would have taken invasion off the table?

107

It can be done in a calutron and that is exactly what Saddam set up. He removed the power requirements (electricity) from the mix by making the units portable. All they had to do was drive from facility to facility to hook up. The fact that we destroyed a set of them shows they existed. I’ve presented evidence from Saddam’s interogation that he fully intended to do this and he had the personnel, the plans, and the fuel in place. According to Hamza, the man in charge, they were months away from building a weapon. We were able to delay that process but Saddam had every intentions of finishing the job.

108

Saddam used threats against the scientists and their family to gain cooperation and he kept them there after the invasion.

109

So was Saddam supposed to murder his scientists to comply with UN resolutions ordering disarmament?

Geez, it’s a simple question.

110

Yes he did. Now, in order to cooperate fully with the inspectors and avoid an embarassing invasion, what should Saddam have done? Kill them all? Order them to talk to the inspectors freely? Even if Saddam publicly “ordered” the scientitst to cooperate, they knew what would happen if they blabbed. Unless they were able to leave the country, they’re going to keep their mouths shut tight.

And given what you posted above, it seems that the CIA wasn’t interested in helping any defecting scientists escape. Wow, way to incent Saddam’s nuclear scientists guys. Heckofa job.

111

No, Saddam was suppose to disarm. Not keep enough fuel to make 100 nukes and hide the plans and whatever equipment he could get away with. The scientists were under threat do whatever Saddam wanted. If they didn’t then they or their family would suffer the consequences.

112

But he didn’t have fuel to make 100 nukes. He had piles of uranium ore. Despite what you say, it’s not easy to convert that uranium ore into fissionable U-235.

The piles of yellowcake weren’t hidden, were they? If there were all these hidden plans and equipment, where did they all end up? Shipped off to Syria in the back of a truck? Yeah, he had the scientists, but how was he supposed to disarm himself of the scientists? Yeah they were under threat, but this is Saddam we’re talking about, he can’t credibly unthreaten the scientists even if he wanted to, which he wouldn’t.

113

I never said the yellowcake was hidden. I said:

Saddam intended to make WMD’s – per his interogator
He had the fuel to do it – the yellowcake
He had the plans to do it – per the scientists
He had the scientists to do it
He had the financial assets to reconstitute the equipment he already constructed

114

What Lemur866 said (for some reason every time I see your user name I think “I want to move it! MOVEIT!”). There is no way Saddam was going to build a nuclear weapon in the environment prior to the 2nd GW no matter how much yellowcake he had or how many nuclear scientists. It’s more difficult than you seem to think it is to refine the materials or engineer the things. It was all he could do to rebuild his conventional and paramilitary forces, let alone attempt a nuclear program. Look at Iran…they aren’t under the same levels of sanctions, don’t have no-fly zones or UN inspectors crawling all over their ass (even intermittently), haven’t suffered a major military defeat, are richer AND have a higher population, and they STILL don’t have a weapon.
None of this has anything to do with why impeachment is off the table though.

-XT

115

Impeachment was never ON the table.

116

Mods, please kill this thread—unless anyone wants to continue the discussion, of course.

117

At the request of the OP.