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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.
The tubes were stated as COULD be used for nuclear weapons. They could also be large drinking straws or sewer pipes. I, for one, would rather NOT take that chance. Better to be too cautious than not cautious enough.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
You know what is even sadder than this? That there were countries in the world who supported the US (Spain) and that there were other countries who sat on their asses and didn't say anything (Canada) rather than aligning against the US like France and Germany. The rest of the world is really to blame here, not the U.S. Had the rest of the world (or even the Democrats) aligned against Bush and his government then none of this would have happened.
I have a hard time believing the New York Times as being a credible source for anything. They are in the same league as CBS and the LA Times. Is this post even Slashdot worthy? I don't think so.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
Yes. The fantasy world you speak of is in vast constrast to reality which includes, Arabs not being able to handle democracy, noone (and certianly not Kerry or Edwards) believing that there were WMD in Iraq before 2003, pre-war Iraq and Afghanistan being idyllic paradises, America safer with Saddam in power, less people dying from the next X amount of years under Bathist rule than under a war which will spread freedom and liberty into the middle east.
Since I am unaware of anyone else doing it, I would like to collect arguments for whether Bush and Cheney should face criminal charges for the following things:
/. journal.
1. The Iraq war was a distraction from the war on terror, not part of it. It only became part of the war on terror after, under Bush/Cheney leadership, the war was executed incompetently (at the leadership, not serviceperson, level). Did Bush/Cheney purposefully destabilize and Iraq and not secure the country to draw the terrorists in? What would Iraqis think of this plan? Is there evidence that this was the plan and in exactly what way is it against U.S. law?
2. Cheney pushed for the war with a clear and obvious conflict of interest, as just former CEO of Halliburton, who is profiting tremendously from the war. Since American patriot servicemen and women have died in the pursuit of profit for Cheney, what specific criminal charges should Cheney face?
3. Once the mistake to invade Iraq was decided, the war was executed incompetently and negligently by Bush. Does this constitue criminal misconduct?
I am trying to collect legal advice and evidence on this topic. Please post here or on my
I will summarize any information collected and post to a future threads. Of course I don't know if anyone is interested in helping to pursue this. I believe it is important for citizens of the United States to recognize and reject the serious illegal actions of this administration. I believe this course should be pursued no matter what the outcome of the election next month.
NT
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Why don't articles like this make the front page:
http://theinquirer.net/?article=18840
THREE PCS from the Washington State HQ of the campaign to re-elect George W. Bush were stolen at the end of last week, the Seattle Times reported.
The Seattle Times quotes the state republican party chairman as saying he believes Democrats were behind the theft.
That's because only specific machines were targeted, Chris Vance is quoted as saying.
The paper said that notebooks used by senior executives in the campaign were lifted in the burglarly. The paper said that while data on the notebooks was backed up, there's still a problem.
The data includes details about a plan to get out Republican voters, dubbed the "72 hour plan". This is a plan to make sure that all registered Republicans vote on election day, rather than sit on their butts and watch Jerry Springer or play blingo on QVC.
I know... it's not like Clinton lied under oath or... oh, wait. That would be (a) lying, and (b) perjury. Not the same at all. Clinton's forgiven.
If only I had the P.J. O'Rourke quote from Clinton about how he believed there to be WMDs in Iraq as well...
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
To try and bring some balance here how about this:
To meet the goals of doubling special forces and their support units, Kerry would have to reinstate draft.
Kerry voted against the 1991 gulf war, which was heavyly supported by the UN and other nations. Iraq would be in control of much of the world's oil supply, and plundering another nation if Kerry had his way. Did that not pass the "gobal test", since Iraq disagreed? Can you really trust Kerry to handle your security?
I can't believe that this is a story on slashdot, and I can't believe that there are morons as ignorant as you out there.
/. is just a bunch of teenage Angry Left whiners. I'm not a Republican by the way. I just hate intellectually vacant political flames like yours. Intellectual discourse my ass.
Clinton was impeached because he LIED UNDER OATH. Such is a CRIME in the United States of America. (Actually, he was impeached because he was stupid enought to do something that was criminal (Not getting a bj, again, LYING UNDER OATH) and his opponents siezed on it for political gain). Regardless, that's entirely different from making the same judgement as every intelligence agent around you.
Independent comissions have largely verified that Bush could not have known the data was inaccurate, and even John Kerry said that Saddam presented a "grave threat."
But for you to say that Clinton didn't commit a crime and Bush did really shows that you don't really give a shit about facts.
Clinton was disbarred from the ABA, by the way. That wasn't an act of some republicans.
What Bush did and what Clinton Did are two different things.
Bush lied based on misguided, exaggerated, or flat out false information that was given to him to make a case for war. As far as Bush knew, or as far as Bush wanted to know, all the information given to him was true and he acted upon it. Either that, or someone was pulling the strings to make him make that decision or he knew it was all bs and lied anyway.
Clinton Lied under oath in a Grand Jury Civil case, which is Perjury. For those of you not in the know, Perjury is a Felony in the US and is punishable by fines and jail time and the like.
So in a nutshell, Clinton could have called for a press conference to be shown primetime and started it by saying "My fellow americians, Right now, in this very room, under this very desk, I am currently getting the best head of my life from my oral lover Monica Lewinski", and outside of the Americian public being "outraged" they couldn't do anything about it (as long as it didn't break any indecency laws) becasue it wasn't against the law.
He could go on the TV the next day after this conference and say to the americian people "I did not have sexual relations...blah blah blah" and they couldn't do anything about it cause he didn't break the law by lying on TV.
Now if he went to a court of law the next day, and swore on a bible to tell the truth, and the attorney walks up to him and askes if he had sex with Monica, he better damn well either take the fifth or say yes, because if he says no, then he just commited a felony. And thats exactly what Clinton did and thats why they tried to hang him high.
Basicially, if you can find a point in time where Bush "Knowinegly" Lied under oath in a court of law while in office, then hang him just as high as Clinton was, but until then he hasn't done anything wrong legally. The absolute worst case scenerio thing that bush did was lie to the american people, and since thats not a felony then he's still in charge.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
I agree 100%.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Thank you for the insightful statement. I am not sure if the Bush administration lies or not. I also am not sure how you could know. Also, is a lie a lie if the lier did not know they were lying? The Bush administration was acting on information that they were given. REMEMBER YOUR GOD JOHN KERRY VOTED FOR THE WAR BASED ON THE SAME INFO!! George Bush simply wants to finish the job correctly. As was evident in the Presidential debate, John Kerry does not have a plan to finish the war. In fact in 20 years as Senator he has done nothing. He has created no new legislation. I am not sure that this man who can't even choose a good hairstyle could lead our country effectively.
Here lies Micheals soap box, ignorance contagious, and other things irrelevant to technology, science, or truth.
I think I have finally figured out the qualifications to being a slashdot editor. You just have to be dumb enough to actually believe that for some reason Bush is evil and only democrats are right for the country.
What a crock if you can post stories like this why not the ones that paint the picture in a positive light for Bush or America. All you post are stories from left wing nut jobs and you claim this is news for nerds or something that matters? It's bullshit.
this mentality that sees one side of a conflict doing violence, but doesn't see the other side. 9/11 is not the ghost of us cold war sins come back to haunt us. believe it or not, the whole world is not centered on the us. there are other areas of the world with their own agendas and concerns, and believe it or not, some of those agendas and concerns are capable of their own original sins.
...
if the us turned into a lake tomorrow, al qaeda would not celebrate and become pastoral sheep farmers: they would go right on with their agenda. bali, madrid, chechnya, etc. so where you see american hegemony, it is as if you see america exerting some sort of domineering conquest against a vacuum of innocent people, while you are conveniently blind to the domineering conquest that the us is responding to.
so howabout some intellectual honesty: the us does good and bad in the world, but mostly it defends itself. just like every other region in the world. so when something like 9/11 happens, don't be surprised if the us responds militarily. in what world do you live in where a military response from the us is not appropriate or just, to prevent something like 9/11 from ever happening ever again?
so you go on with your bad self, but you seem to have a very propaganda-addled pov, not an intellectually honest one, one that should take careful measure of malice and good intent, on both sides of a conflict.
those who rally around the us flag and shout "rah rah rah! everything the us does is good!" are stupid. the mirror image of that is not intelligence, it's simply more stupidity: "rah rah rah! everything the us does is bad!"
so many propagandized closed minded sheep in this world. i just wish some were more intellectually honest, and see it as it really is: complex. not simple one-dimensional card board cut outs. and intelligence is NOT responding to one flavor of cardboard cut out with an opposing flavor.
please be intellectually honest people: the us does good and bad in the world. i am so sorry if this intellectually honest and measured approach goes against the latest lowest common denominator fashionable propaganda and just isn't "cool" and counterculture. pop culture is dumb. so is counterculture. the only thing that is intelligent is honesty, but it's just not trendy or cool for anyone, so we get lost in the haze of one-sided morons yelling at opposing one-sided morons, and no problems get solved at all.
do you care about the problems in this world? do you honestly? or do only care about them as far as you can salve your conscience with them? and then it's "ooh! look what's on tv!"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Is this another one of those 'reports' from Dan Rather?
Sounds like a grand Crusade!
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
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)
Clinton had access to much of the same information as did Bush later on. That he said he also believed that Iraq had banned weapons suggests that he saw something earlier on that would lead him to believe such.
As for Bush having no evidence, I will give some credence to the idea that the nuclear program was overblown at best. After Israel destroyed Osiraq, it would have been nearly impossible to properly reconstitute the program without having access to a nuclear reactor. But chemical and biological weapons were another story. British intelligence believed that Iraq possessed such weapons, too. So did Russian intelligence. So did Egyptian intelligence. So did Jordanian intelligence.
Did they all lie, too?
Finally, if he's continuing his "lie...to this very day," then why has Colin Powell come out and admitted -- and has for months now -- that the programs may well have been dismantled, and that there probably will not be any discoveries of such weapons?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
As far as the country is concerned, getting a BJ wasn't the problem. Lying to his family wasn't the problem. Lying to the public wasn't even the problem. Lying to a grand jury as holder of the highest public office in the country (not to mention using powers of that public office to cover it up ahead of time), WAS a problem.
Republican or Democrat affiliations aside, that's a serious matter, in my opinion. If we can't count on politicians not to lie in such forums, I don't care who it is or what they're lying about, they're putting their own interests ahead of their public duty as a citizen...and as President of the United States.
So, both W's lies and Clinton's lies are both important, in different ways.
The American news media doesn't have that big of a lock (yet) on things like this.
/. due to the fact that I don't think it is a duplicate story.... not that that happens much here on /. ;)
/., much less the New York Times. I guess that OSTN (OSTG?) is "raking in the dough" because of the huge number of posts to this article. This should have been kept in the "Politics" section only. What is /. becoming now, a political news website?
Yeah, this is incredibly old news, and looks like the New York Times is holding back to deliberately affect the election through a pure political endorsement of John Kerry.
I just wish the New York Times would openly admit that they endorse Kerry for President and be done with it. Proclaim it loudly and put the endorsement on the front page in a small box from now until the elections so that you are certain to know just how their news stories are slanted. Pretending that they are "unbiased" and "objective journalists" is pure BS and the folks at that newspaper know it.
When listening to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, at least you know that they openly endorse Geroge W. Bush from the get go, and their programs are justifiably biased in that direction.
Besides, this has already been beaten to death in blogs as well, and is only a big deal now on
This should not have even made the front page of
You are mistaken on a number of points.
First, there were in fact WMDs found in Iraq, just not the large stockpiles that were expected (yet?). So far there have been about 24 chemical weapons found, of which 2 were set up for use as IEDs to attack a convoy. Everything announced so far appears to be old stock, i.e. from the war with Iran. None the less, they are technically WMD.
Second, Iraq was found to be building banned weapons (long range rockets and drones) and have ongoing reasearch into WMDs.
Third, there wasn't merely "errors" in their documents, but in fact a deliberate attempt to mislead and hide the truth. In addition, records of Iraqs programs were destroyed by the regime in an attempt to cover up their activities.
Fourth, the Iraqis were still attempting to sytmie the inspectors.
Fifth, your numbers for dead civilians are inflated. The high end of your numbers would be around the number that Saddam killed pretty much every year. One of the great things about Saddam being out of power is that he won't be killing those people year, after year, after year.
So, was it worth it to invade Iraq to stop Saddams manufacturing of banned weapons, ongoing programs into WMD, massive violations of human rights (mass executions, amputations, feeding people into shredders, etc.), and support for terrorism? (Yes, Saddam supported terrorists. Openly.) In six months why don't we ask some of the 30,000 Iraqis that will have voted in the first free elections in Iraq and who probably wouldn't be living if Saddam were still in power.
By going to war against Iraq, the US stopped Saddam's ongoing war on the people of Iraq.
He wasn't. Getting a BJ is not a crime. He was impeached for perjury, which is a crime, and a serious one.
Actually, the rest of the world had concluded that Iraq DID have WMDs, including some plans to build nukes (save for the aluminum pipes). This is not even in dispute. France, Russia, Germany all agreed that Iraq had and was building WMDs, and voted for sanctions. Even Seria voted for the resolutions. Again, google it and see that this is not in dispute.
But then again, why should be let the facts get in the way of a good US bashing, right?
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Well, that's still a good 60 million or more people who actually voted for the robber president. So, the best you can say is that of the part of the population who could actually be bothered having a hand in your country's democratic election almost exactly half wanted him to rule. Since everyone was given the option to vote, barring some who's votes were discounted by the sheenanigans of your scheming/cheating president, we can only assume that the rest of the population would have voted similarly. It's a big enough poll sample to stand up to extrapolation.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Here's a clue f-maggots. Americans LOVE WAR. We crave the violent catharsis that stomping the carp out of weaker countries brings. We REVEL in seeing our victories chronicled on television. Who the flock cares if Saddam had WMDs. We KNOW it was a weak and flimsy rationalization at best, and we LOVE George W for having thr bulls to use it as an excuse for an attack. The important thing is, we WON, we KICKED ARSE. and it gives us a Hugh G. Rexxion just thinking about it. And after W is reelected, we're gonna STOMP Iran. And then N Korea. Why? Because we LOVE IT. So either learn to love war, or move to France, wuss!
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
Actually, you forgot to mention the SECOND
LARGEST contingent of "forces" deployed in
Iraq -- the USA-based contractors, such as
Halliburton, Kellog-Brown-Kerr, etc.
The ranks of the coalition forces for this
second Iraq war is filled with what would
otherwise be characterized as "mercenaries".
Not unlike the majority of forces used in
Afghanistan to rout the Taliban.
The biggest differences between the "interests"
of the USA in Afghanistan and Iraq are (1) OIL,
and (2) proximity to Bush/Cheney's masters, the
Saudi Arabians.
At this juncture, it becomes less difficult to
believe that the Saudi Arabian government WAS
BEHIND the 9/11/2001 attacks, AND that the Bush
administration insiders were in on it. The Iraq
war could NOT HAVE BEEN JUSTIFIED to either the
American people or the UN without those terror
attacks.
The Bush administration paved the way for the
Saudi Arabian OSS (excuse me, Al Qaeda) to get
into the USA with the State Department's VISA
Express Program. And the Bush administration
paved the way for the supporting staff to exit
the USA with the Saudi chartered air flights
afterwards. The Saudi embassy withdrew more
than $30 million dollars in cold hard cash from
Riggs Bank to finance the operation, and to
"grease the wheels" of USA politicos and oil
business interests.
When the George W. Bush regime is over (in 2005
or 2009), the International Criminal Court needs
to set up a separate docket just to handle the
Bush administration. (Of course, that presumes
that the world (or the world court) will still
be around then, let alone American democracy.)
If Bush steals the next election, all bets will
be off for 2009 or beyond to prosecute our King
George II and his proxy Richard Cheney.
Bush eats babies, while mothers watch....
Since you, computer science undergrads, are going to be earning more than 95% of the country and are going to be the most burdened by democratic tax hikes, you need to be a little fairer to George Bush. When an article says "inherent ambiguity of intelligence" you can't go off and say "White House lied!" When a conservative house of representatives decreases NASA's budget and a conservative senate increases NASA's budget, you can't say "NASA budget reduced!"
You can't make up your own news just because you like disagreeing with the establishment. There has to be a sensible reason. For computer science students, there is no sensible reason to be fighting George Bush. Why only report the news that opposes the president? Why don't you also pay next year's taxes in full? Why stop half way?
You SO fucking owned me! SPANKED my ass, niggah! God-DAMN! Scuse me while I pack my shit up and go live at home again, cuz I am deBASED, motherfucker! HAHAHAHAHA body suit. Shit.
That'll school me to fuck with the MASTAH, won't it?