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White House Lied About Iraq Nuclear Programs
An anonymous reader writes "This New York Times article reports that in 2002, the Bush Administration's assertions that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program were based on evidence that was doubted by the government's foremost nuclear security experts. Specifically, aluminum tubes most likely meant for small artillery rockets were interpreted by the administration as parts for uranium centrifuges." In a nutshell: while Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges.
I keep reading stories like this, hoping the American public will finally "get it". But it never happens. Richard Clarke, the 9/11 commision, Abu Ghraib, whatever. If it's not there kid in Iraq, they don't care. We just need to face it: about 45% of this country is going to support Bush no matter what. I'm not saying people should switch to Kerry, but if you still support Bush at this point, you must have constructed a very elaborate little fantasy world in your head.
And yet people still want to vote for W. I just don't get it.
And when the plan entails thousands of US casualties, and tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties, do you call that "caution?"
Regardless of whether you think it is right or wrong to go to war, ie whether or not we had a casus bella against him that would stand up in a court of law, it is, in my oppinion, bad policy to risk so many of your own lives, and kill so many of their people, just because you are legally allowed to and pretty fed up. If your experts aren't giving you real data that says yes, in all likelihood this country is producing weapons of mass destruction, and is likely to use it, it's just not worth it. It is particularly not worth it if all the experts are saying the likely result is chaos which is not beneficial to U.S. interests. The problem with the Bush administration's approach is that they basically were looking, from day 1, for a way to justify attacking Iraq. What they then did was latch on to any flimsy excuse. The result isn't that pretty, but regardless of the result, it was wrong to risk U.S. lives, and Iraqi lives, on flimsy evidence that you knew to be flimsy and probably inaccurate. They payoff that was expected to off-balance those risks has yet to come, and it looks like it probably won't.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
Easy to say when it's not your country that was invaded. Easy to say when it's thousands of non-American civilians that are paying the price.
Why don't you prove that YOU don't have weapons. Let us know how that goes. Good luck!
BTW, if you can prove a negative, please let the world know. It will be a great advance.
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
when we let Saddam off the hook in '91, one of the conditions was that he would have to prove that he had no weapons.
How do you prove that something doesn't exist?
You can't take the sky from me...
I don't know about liberal eyes, (or even what a liberal is exactly), and I don't know about aluminum tubes either. But I do know that anybody who claims that the Bush government doesn't lie and manipulate on a regular basis is not in the business of viewing the world at all.
-FL
Is this all that you can come up with? Could you point to something to refute what was said?
Actually, does that even matter? They are responsible for knowing this if the CIA knew this. They said what they said while the knowledge existed in their little club. Whether or not the president was personally aware of the fact is irrelevant, as far as I am concerned.
It's called responsibility.
It has been proven many times: The American people don't mind violence, even extreme violence, but the moment you do something sexual, the American public will call for your head on a pike. Same concept here, really.
Face it, Bush was going to war because he wanted to go to war, period. When the UN voted against invasion, he basically gave them the finger and went in anyway. (What would happen if a country other than the US did the same thing? That country would probably be a giant hole in the ground right now.) Now look at the mess we have. We haven't accomplished a damned thing over there other than making the Arab popluation hate us even more.
It really hit home last week during the debate. Kerry said something along the lines of "what we decide to do has to pass the 'global test,'" which I thought is indeed very true. As soon as he said that, Bush got pissed. It just highlighted the fact that Bush & co. couldn't give a shit less about what the rest of the world thinks. They are gonna do what they want to do and no one is going to get in their way.
It's time to get real, guys. Every decsion you make has a global impact and you better damn well think about how the rest of the world is going to react to your decisions if you are truely concerned with making the world a better place in the long run.
I wouldn't count on Bush being tried in a court of law unless he personally killed someone, in cold blood, with 10 witnesses, and was caught grinning into the camera.
And for impersonally killing thousands of people, in cold blood, with millions of witnesses, and being caught grinning into the camera, he may well be re-elected. Superb.
Because Republicans control the Legislative branch (Congress/House). Since these are the folks that would be the ones to start the investigation it's not going to happen. It's not about the law, it's about the politics.
Clinton's BJ got investigated (along with impeachment) because the Republicans controlling the legislature had a chance to embarrass the Democrats (Clinton).
[TANGENT]
A fascinating amendment would be that no person with a felony conviction would be allowed to hold public office. That would never happen. The thought of every candidate having to pass the equivalent of a DOD/DOE Secret background screening makes me laugh.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
I hope you get to attend a university someday. You might learn to do some research and have informed opinions. (OK, I think you do not have the ability to think critically; I hope I am wrong.)
We forced the inspectors to leave. We (i.e. Bush) decided that the inspectors' mission had failed and offered as evidence a pack of lies.
"we tried that for OVER A DECADE and it wasn't working"
Did we find any WMDs? NO! This sounds like success to me. How to justify this comment ("it wasn't working") of yours?
Is there even one honest bone in your body? Are you just a political hack?
How do I prove I don't have something? Especially if you are convinced that I do? It is easy to prove I have something, I can show it to you. But to prove I don't have it I... show you nothing? But then you say it is over there. So I show you there is nothing over here and you say that I moved it over there. Of course, by the time we are able to check, you say I've moved it somewhere else.
However, getting away from the philosophical and theoretical prove, I am pretty sure that was never a condition to begin with. He had to agree not to develop weapons of mass destruction and allow inspectors to look around to verify that he wasn't. While we can't prove somebody doesn't have WMD, we can be reasonably certain they don't because the development of all them leaves chemical traces behind that can be detected long after they've left. Which is why an inspection regime can work.
The ball was in Saddam's court.
No, he let the weapons inspectors in and let them search anywhere. We gave them the locations of where we thought they were producing WMDs and they all turned out completely wrong. We kicked the weapons inspectors out so that we could bomb Iraq.
The problem with this whole post is this: Just because I disagree with Bush out of doesn't mean that I like the Democrats. I dislike both parties. They're both up to their ears in risky foreign policy that earns us the hate of the rest of the world. How many dictators (including Saddam) have the Democrats and Republicans installed over the years? Remind me why they supported (or orchestrated) the destruction of several democratic governments in the Americas alone?
It's time to get rid of both of our main parties.
The way I interperted "global test" was more along the lines of carefully thinking out our actions and basically putting ourselves in the rest of the world's shoes. "How will the Arab world react if we do X? What if we do Y? And what about the Chinese?" The Global Test is more of an abstract concept than a strictly defined set of rules. Sure, for things that don't require immediate action, we should most definately get the input of foreign leaders.
And that's just the problem. I don't think Bush & co. have been taking seriously any of the input from the rest of the world.
And before you start typing your rebutal to my comment, let me add that I think it was stupid of the legislative branch to vote in favor of providing an option for the executive branch to make war....
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
"We train our children to drop fire on people, but we won't let them write 'fuck' on the sides of their airplanes, because it's obscene." -- Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now
My site: Free Nature Pictures
and i fear it's tehran, here we come, and a draft, in 2005. because i don't know about you, but i don't trust those mullahs with nukes, and i know for certain the neocons, or even the dems, don't either.
... but "Brand USA" is looking pretty busted right now. The US already imports far more than it exports. As the US gets more "on the nose" because of its unilateral foreign policy - people who buy US products around the world are going to shop elsewhere.
Do you really think that after all of this, the rest of the world trusts the US with nukes?
This is the main problem - the US, which was basically trusted by most of the world to "do the right thing" is now seen as consistently doing "the wrong thing".
Now there isn't much that the "rest of the world" can do about it
The US once was percieved as a "beacon of freedom" in the way that no other nation has been in history. Your current President has managed to flush that reputation down the toilet. It would take 20 years of great Presidents really making positive contributions to the world (as the US did for the most part last century) to undo the damage the current one has done. If the current one gets re-elected, I'm pretty sure that in four years time Americans abroad will be about as popular as white South Africans abroad during the 1980's.
Second of all, Clinton shouldn't have been on trial for impeachment for getting a blow job in the first place. That he was should be far more worthy of outcry and riot than his lying about it.
And thirdly, while Clinton may very well have believed there were WMDs in Iraq, Bush had no evidence to that effect whatsoever, lied to the American people about it (and continues to do so to this very day), and proceeded to murder thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians for no other reason than to get some more of that tasty oil. And oh yeah, he got rid of a "brutal dictator" in the process... one that posed no credible threat to the U.S., and one of very many "brutal dictators" on this planet -- but the only one with so much delicious oil in his back yard.
Apparently they didn't teach you in school that Opinion Pieces (i.e. the Op-Ed piece you linked to above) are the opinion of the author of the piece and usually have a loose license to the truth. While on the other hand the article in the actual story is reporting which comes with a much higher burden of proof for facts.
m ocraticunderground.org/c om/ (remember the Kerry Intern story he broke, and turned out to be a pile of...
Don't use Op-Ed pieces as source for 'facts', also don't use an extremist site to get 'facts'. Examples of sites that do not qualify as reliable on facts are:
http://www.freerepublic.org/
http://www.de
http://www.drudgereport.
http://www.commondreams.org/
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
The 'disappointing' part of it was the lack of sexual shock. I watched the Superbowl in a dorm room with 8 other college-aged guys, a fairly sexually charged group of people. Half of the people in the room didn't even *notice* that it was happening, and those that actually saw anything didn't really think anything of it. Christ, it's like whining about seeing a woman breastfeeding her baby in a public park. It might be giggle-inducing for those under 16, but it's hardly harmful or "disappointing."
Your portrayal of sexuality (and how it is/should be viewed) as one of two extremes is a little unfortunate. The 'sex-fest' that is MTV (an informed observation on your part, I'm sure) is certainly not realistic nor necessarily beneficial when teaching children about sex, but it is no more skewed and inaccurate than the wildly conservative views touted as family friendly.
If you feel the need to actually adjust your television viewing habits due to the sexual content on a public network, you could probably stand to do a little better in educating those whom you seem to be a role model or some sort of parental figure for. If the MTVesque view is something you don't want perpetuated, censoring it exactly what not to do. Religious affiliation and the fact they're involved in a church group aside, they're still regular kids. Most of them will have more meaningful sexual information provided to them by their peers. Being honest and open in your dealings with these teens when it comes to sex will be more effective.
As long, of course, as you're willing to accept the fact that they may develop opinions slightly more liberal than your own.
LegendMUD
The WMD fiasco is nothing but a sideshow to keep you from seeing the real underlying issues here.
Ever since Vietnam the Presidents have totally pissed on the Constitution they swore to uphold. The President has NEVER had power to declare war, that was granted to the Congress. I don't recall Congress declaring war against Iraq, for whatever reason.
The Congress does not want the political heat of declaring war. So they attempt to push that over to Bush by signing a letter of "support for our troops". They can then blame the President for whatever goes wrong, or take credit for whatever goes right. This way, they keep their offices relatively unspotted in the view of the people. Offices which in reality consist largely of shoveling money towards corporate interests.
All this reeks of the same corruption that occurred when the Senators of the Roman Republic shoveled all their power over to Octavian... making him Caesar. Those Senators did not want to risk alienating the people by taking stands on issues, they would rather let Augustus do it, and then blame him when things went sour. Thus, those Senators could hide their incompetency and accountability from the people, while continuing their corrupt business dealings.
We read in Article I Section 8 that Congress has power...:
Article I Section 8 (Powers granted to Congress):
"...To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;...."
In Section 1 or Article II we read: Article II Section 1 (Executive branch, office of President):
"...Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Now that Congress has no gumption and represents corporations instead of the people-- the President does whatever he wants. So we go to war at his say so, over whatever he wants us to fight and die for. The leaders of our country swore to uphold the Constitution, yet they piss on the balance of power that was built into it for their own political and personal gain.
And these people are going to bring "freedom" to Iraq. Physicians... heal thy selves.
"I'll liberate you peoples' fate
Spoke the Burnin' Bush
But the song of beasts
Growl with oil soaked teeth
Their dollar is mighty and true
Now the eagle soars the sky
Over refugee and child
And to all there is no end
Another day in perfect Hell"-- Flogging Molly
Ummm, didn't you forget something? The reports that Iraq submitted did not show that they destroyed all the weapons they were known to have. Quite the contrary.
The UN did agree that there were unaccounted for weapons and chemicals. Why do you think there were 17 resolutions? The UN however, wanted to wait for the inspectors to find the weapons that were unaccounted for, while the US did not want to wait for 17 more resolutions.
Whether or not you support the war, please get the facts straight. Saddam failed to comply with any of the resolutions. The thousands of pages of reports further proved the UN's, not just the US's , assertions that Iraq had not proven through documentation that they had in fact destroyed all the weapons the UN knew they had from prior inspections.
You're right about the likely connection to upright walking, but a more direct reason for the sexualization of the female breast has to do with frontal coitus, largely unique to homo sapiens, although also practiced on occasion by those fun loving bonobos ("pygmy chimps").
... for sexual purposes.
Big fat orbs are a basic sexual signal to the male ape, and breasts provide the "big fat ass orbs" signal when having sex face to face, in place of the ass.... And of course face-to-face coitus is facilitated by the skeletal structure associated with upright walking. So likely the transition to upright posture, the development of face to face coitus and the enlargement of breasts to function as a "sexual" organ occured together in evolutionary time.
Breasts in short, and in part, are an ass transplanted to the chest
But beyond that the REAL REAL reason for the sexualization of breasts is very modern and has to do with the decline of breast feeding.
Western and American children, deprived of the NORMAL two to three years of breast feeding that homo sapiens have enjoyed throughout recent evolutionary history, never got enough of the boob and spend their lives lusting after what they missed.
The hyper-sexualization of breasts is DIRECTLY related to the decline of breastfeeding.
American men in particular are known to be breast obsessed as adults, while breast feeding rates in America are among the lowest in the world - That's a correlation that does suggest causation!
Go to cultures where children derive significant portion of their nutritional needs through the first 3 years of life from the breast and you will find that (1) it is the buttocks and legs that are more sexualized and (2) breasts are freely displayed (often) becase they pretty much thought of as feeding tubes, quite unconnected to sex. http://milkofhumankindness.org/
That's the real story, you breast deprived American men.
(Yes, I'm an American man too.)
Because America is going to get us all killed, and as i dont live in the US, i dont even get to vote against it.
Actually, thats a bit unfair.
George Bush, Dick Chaney and John Ashcroft are going to get us all killed.
1. They are highly placed politicians. When our parents were getting killed in Vietnam, these guys got themselves tanned in Air National Guard.
2. This is the not the first time a US prez. has lied to goto War. Check our chequered history and you will find many such men.
3.As long as we act like stupid GI Joe guys, put our heads into sand and refuse to think the World is a bigger place than USA, and as long as we refuse to listen to true world news instead of the Fox news crap about Peterson trial/Jacko Whacko trial, we will continue to have presidents and heads of state who will send our young men/women to their deaths without reason.
Amen.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Please explain what the point is in having the UN if a single rogue nation (the US) can ignore the consensus of all the other members of the UN and blow the crap out of another country? Especially since in the end it turned out that there were no grounds for war.
I'd also love to know why it's ok for the US to hold WMDs (especially given the US's record regarding wars) but it's not ok for another nation to hold them?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I saw in some pro-Bush advertisement a picture of U.S. soldiers standing in front of crates full of what looked like shoulder fired missiles. The large caption said something like "And some say Iraq had no weapons"
My jaw hit the floor. They were a soverign nation, with an army. Of fucking COURSE they are going to have weapons! Hell, we probably sold them those rockets. The Bush supporters have gone from twisting the truth to twisting lies!
I remember when we invaded Iraq, because my wife and I had already had a weeklong trip planned for Paris. We had to decide whether we wanted to go or not, because the U.S. invaded Iraq on a Thursday, and we left for Paris on Sunday. We had to question whether it would be safe. It was of course, and we received zero ill treatment there. I got 10x worse treatment here at home, in O'hare airport. One NASCAR following, Bush-loving idiot at work asked me when I got back if I asked for any "Freedom Fries" while I was there, and I just stared blankly at him. He also asked if I got enough to eat, because the French eat just tiny little portions. (another blank stare)
But I digress... I remember, and some people seem to forget, that Saddam DID let weapons inspectors into Iraq. Yes, for years he dodged them, but when the threat was made by the U.S., he let them in. They didn't find anything, and before the inspectors could finalize their work and come out and officially say "Iraq has no WMD", Bush decided to invade. I remember specifically, he said the inspectors should leave because we were going in. And now the Bush supporters somehow forgot all of that and like to say that Saddam wasn't cooperating with UN weapons inspectors.
I just don't get it. Even after something like 9/11 (which again, has NOTHING to do with Iraq - even GW said so after 9/11) doesn't wake up the American people to the fact that we are not invulnerable. We can't go pushing around other countries without reprocussions. Bush had nothing to do with what caused 9/11, but he is setting us up for the next one. He is making sure that we are hated throughout the world, and that makes me nervous.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Complaining about a dictator is easy.
Yep, that's right.
Removing him when you KNOW its going to cost lives requires a tad more moral character, will, and resolve, especially when you know its going to piss some people off who are making money off that dictatorship.
Yep, that's right.
But it isn't applicable in this case because that wasn't how the war was sold to the US citizens.
We didn't go in to remove a dictator.
We went in because a dictator with terrorist connections was hiding "WMD's" and preparing to use them against the US.
Telling so many lies (and continuing to tell them) to sell your war does NOT show "moral character, will, and resolve".
Rather it shows the opposite. Too bad for your side.
By going to war against Iraq, the US stopped Saddam's ongoing war on the people of Iraq.
0 030319-1.html) to garner public support.
People sure do like to bring that up. The funny thing is, it is NOT the point. The point is, that's not why we were told we're going to war. It was that Iraq had massive amounts of WMDs (Big fucking deal) and it was stated by Bush that Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/2
These were both LIES. That is the point. This current administration lied to all of us, and now its supporters want to go around and say "but that's ok, because there's other good reasons for the war". Yea, if these reasons are that good then why lie to us in the beginning? Maybe it's because this administrationg prefers to us fear to sway public opinion?
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It's almost hilarious how obvious it is.
"A good friend will bail you out of jail. A true friend will be sitting next to you saying, 'damn....that was fun!'"