posted 06-14-2003 12:16 PM            

By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher

June 13, 2003—It appears that the only weapons of mass destruction are George W. Bush and Tony Blair who destroyed Iraq based on a pack of lies that are now blowing up (pun intended) in their faces.

Last week, sitting before television cameras in Europe, Bush, citing what he described as two mobile biological or chemical weapons labs, declared the WMD had been found. Bush completely dismissed the skepticism of his own experts..

Late Friday, a knowledgeable source, who was a certified nuclear-biological-chemical (NBC) officer in the US military and is familiar with the oil business, suggested to Online Journal that the vans might actually be "mobile oil analysis labs, which are customarily deployed at the corps level within the Iraqi, former Soviet and US armies." The source said that "oil analysis is completed on a periodic basis, especially on aircraft, including helicopters, and on heavy equipment, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc. This is preventive maintenance and was completed in Iraq as well as throughout all armies and air forces of the world."

The source said the idea of mobile biological or chemical labs "is extremely bold and dangerous. Chemical agent productions are very unstable activities subject to low tolerances even on humidity within the air. The manufacture of biologicals is even less stable. Moving into the unstable environment of a mobile lab is ludicrous and the stuff from comic books, not science, nor weapons production."

But "the stuff from comic books" is one of the many lies Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, among others in the administration, and Blair and his cabinet allies told in order to justify an unprecedented and illegal attack on Iraq.

Sunday, the UK's Observer reported it "has established that it is increasingly likely that the units were designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill artillery balloons, part of a system originally sold to Saddam by Britain in 1987."

No traces of chemicals or pathogens have been found in the units—one of which was found in April and the other in May. Experts contend that it is impossible to do such a thorough cleaning. Moreover, they point out that canvass-sided trailers are hardly the things one would use to work on such volatile and dangerous substances.

According to the Observer the CIA stated, "Senior Iraqi officials of the al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development, and Engineering facility in Mosul were shown pictures of the mobile production trailers, and they claimed that the trailers were used to chemically produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons."

Artillery weather balloons are used to determine wind speed and direction "allowing more accurate artillery fire. Crucially, these systems need to be mobile," the Observer noted.

The paper said it "discovered that not only did the Iraq military have such a system at one time, but that it was actually sold to them by the British. In 1987 Marconi, now known as AMS, sold the Iraqi army an Artillery Meteorological System or Amets for short."

But mobile biological and chemical weapons labs are just one set of lies told by Bush & Co. and Blair & Co. There is the plagiarized dossier supplied by Blair and used by Powell before the UN as absolute proof that Saddam Hussein had WMD. There is the forged letter claiming Saddam tried to buy uranium for his alleged nuclear weapons program from Niger. There are the lies that, within 45 minutes, Saddam was capable of loosing his WMD on the UK; that he intended to use WMD on US, British and Australian troops. All the above and more were given as reasons as to why Bush and Blair had to immediately strike Iraq.

While Powell and Rice made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows trying to spin away the truth—Rice even accusing those who charge the administration cooked the intelligence to make their case for invasion of "revisionist history"—members of the British Parliament are demanding that Downing Street explain why it suppressed a "six-page report, from the Joint Intelligence Committee staff" that "said there was no evidence Saddam posed a significantly greater threat than in 1991," according to Monday's Independent.

The false reasons given for invading Iraq have become a scandal of epic proportion in the UK. The prime minister now faces a possible judicial review, called for by the co-founder of his wife's law firm, Rabinder Singh QC, who is considered a leading international and human rights barrister at Matrix chambers, on the ground that no WMD have been found, according to Sunday's Observer.

In his summary, the Observer reported, Singh wrote, "The allegations made by former members of the Cabinet in the recent past, that the evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction was exaggerated by the UK and the US prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, call into question the factual foundation for the Attorney-General's view that the invasion was lawful in international law. In our view there is therefore a strong case for establishing a judicial inquiry to examine that legal question."

If the action is successful, according to the Observer, "it could lead to the Prime Minister being prosecuted for war crimes in an action led by his wife's chambers."

With not a single WMD yet found in Iraq, there is speculation here that the Bush administration may, in an act of desperation, plant them in order to stave off impeachment as the scandal grows at home and in case the downgrading of the certainty of what Saddam had to "capabilities" and "programs" don't wash. "Capabilities" and "programs" don't add up to imminent threats to Saddam's neighbors, the US, the UK or the world.

The Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committee has ordered an investigation into the administration's alleged abuse of intelligence information. A 2002 Pentagon intelligence report concluded that there was "no reliable information" that Iraq had biological or chemical weapons and that there was no reliable evidence that it was stockpiling chemical weapons.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh), who is seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for president, last week led 30 House members in introducing a Resolution of Inquiry to force the Bush administration to prove its claims that Iraq has WMD. Kucinich used a similar privileged resolution last March to force the administration to release the 12,000-page weapons report Iraq submitted to the UN.

"This administration owes an explanation to this Congress and to the American people," Kucinich said. "Now is the time for truth telling."

On June 5, which marked the second anniversary of his departure from the Republican Party, Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont made the following remarks before the National Press Club in Washington:

In place of thoughtful policy we now have superficial and cynical sound-bites. Instead of confronting pressing national problems, our President lands airplanes while Rome burns.

While our troops search for W-M-D's in Iraq—we have found our own W-M-D's right here in Washington—at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They are President Bush's weapons of mass distortion, or better distraction. The Bush Administration says one thing and does another to take the focus off the present realities.

Does he think we don't notice?

In Iraq, we have seen the inexcusable results of what happens when the Bush Administration says one thing and does another. Last fall, the President said UN weapons inspectors would be allowed to do their job, but in reality, he didn't give them the time they needed. I am pleased to see calls for Congressional investigations to determine whether the President manipulated intelligence information to build support for the war. Why the hurry to invade a country and use military force in such an unprecedented manner? Where was the imminent threat to the United States? And where are the weapons of mass destruction?

As he prepared to invade Iraq and win the support of other nations, the President promised the world that the US had a plan in place to rebuild that nation. But it quickly became apparent that there was no plan. While our military guarded the oilfields, we showed no compassion for the Iraqi people as we allowed their national treasures to be looted. All we see now is growing unrest with the US presence in Iraq. Every day we see more lawlessness, more upheaval and more US soldiers being killed. Is it any surprise that a recent Pell Research Center survey of 16,000 people from 20 nations shows a dramatic rise in distrust and skepticism toward the United States?

Does he think we don't notice?

But people are noticing—even the corporate media are noticing. John Dean, who as counsel to the president told Richard Nixon "there is a cancer on the presidency," also is noticing.

In an article, Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction: Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?, Dean wrote "To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be 'a high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony 'to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.'"

Former UN senior weapons inspector Scott Ritter, speaking to the Swiss daily Le Temps last Friday, called upon Bush and Blair to "admit their lies" about WMD. Ritter, a former US Marine intelligence officer who headed up the UN inspections team in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, contended Hussein could not have destroyed the weapons, as Rumsfeld recently suggested, "without leaving traces . . . Donald Rumsfeld has furnished no proof of their supposed destruction, just as he has never furnished the slightest proof of their existence."

Even neoconservative William Kristol, chairman of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and editor of the Weekly Standard, is noticing. PNAC is the architect of much of Bush's foreign policy, especially the unleashing of military might on any nation the US declares an enemy.

Kristol, one of the prime movers and shakers behind the invasion of Iraq, told NewsMax, "I don't think we need to be apologetic about the war." NewsMax added, "But he said the U.S.'s inability to uncover significant quantities of Iraqi WMDs means that the war may not have been as necessary and urgent as previously believed."

"People like me, who were hawks, said the war was both just, prudent and urgent," Kristol said. "I think just and prudent—fine. But it is fair to say that if we don't find serious weapons of mass destruction capabilities, the case for urgency, which Bush and Blair certainly articulated, is going to be undercut to some degree."

Some might call that an understatement, because Bush also has to wrestle with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's admission, "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on" and that Iraq "swims on a sea of oil."

Was it all about oil? Not quite, as Paul Bremer, the viceroy of Occupied Iraq, is proving as he dismantles what is left of Iraqi civilization to pave the way for turning the country into Corporate Iraq, and Washington debates which of Iraq's utilities to privatize. Rumsfeld, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, "has already said he wants to see some of Iraq's state-run businesses sold off, although he did not specifically mention the utilities."

The promised representative government of, by and for Iraqis is not about to be allowed any time soon, either—at least not until June 2004, according to Rumsfeld. Nor is it in the cards for the Iraqis to choose what form that government will take, especially if they want a form of Islamic rule.

At a press briefing last Thursday, Rumsfeld was asked, "Are you concerned at all about the pace of establishing an Iraqi government, the Iraqis establishing an Iraqi government?"

The defense secretary replied, "I'm really not, it seems to me that it's a hard thing to do, to go from a dictatorship to a—on a path towards some sort of representative government and it has to be an Iraqi model that evolves that they have ownership in. If you think about it, Adolf Hitler was elected, so elections are not the certain judge. You don't want to have an election one time and then a dictator and then go right back to some dictator model. And you don't want to have a model that is, in Iraq, that is different from the one that has been generally set forth, namely a single country, a country that doesn't threaten its neighbors, a country that is respectful of the religious and ethnic composition of the country and that they have voice in their government. Now, does that happen in five minutes? No it doesn't. Think of how long it took us in the United States—eleven years from the Articles of Confederation to a Constitution. It takes time for Eastern Europe to do it. It's taking time for Afghanistan to do it. They're not going to have their elections for a permanent government I don't believe until June of next year. So I think its important that there constantly be progress going forward, I think it's important that Iraqis be engaged in all of those activities that will get them there—that is to say a constitutional convention of some sort, a process that will move it forward to an interim authority of some kind, and then some participation and then ultimately a permanent government. What that pace ought to be I don't know and I know that Ambassador Bremer is doing a darn good job working on it.

Rumsfeld got it wrong when he said Hitler was elected. Hitler was no more elected than was George W. Bush. As historian Alan Bullock put it, "Hitler came to office in 1933 as the result, not of any irresistible revolutionary or national movement sweeping him into power, nor even of a popular victory at the polls, but as part of a shoddy political deal with the 'Old Gang' whom he had been attacking for months . . . Hitler did not seize power; he was jobbed into office by a backstairs intrigue." Yet, the defense secretary has used this falsehood to deny the Iraqis the liberty and self-determination that the Bush administration repeatedly promised them.

posted 06-14-2003 01:01 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fastwalker:
Wishful thinking Mech. You are a hopeless case.

---

Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For fanaticism is incompatible with the open-minded, inquiring spirit of science--with the readiness to accept the discipline of external reality, even if it conflicts with one's personal hopes and beliefs. The motto of the fanatic is "Don't confuse me with the facts--I've made up my mind." This is the exact antithesis of the scientific outlook.
--- Arthur C. Clarke
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(as if written specifically for FW's consistent bias!)

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fastwalker:
Wishful thinking Mech. You are a hopeless case.

---

FW consistently:
"Don't confuse me with the facts--I've made up my mind."

posted 06-14-2003 01:06 PM            

Remember, I was the FIRST one here who said Bu$h won't make it to the 2004 election cycle.

That still stands true.

posted 06-14-2003 08:55 PM            

US finds 'no illegal Iraqi arms'

Saturday 14 June 2003, 10:30 AM
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/14/1055220803630.html

An elite US special forces unit secretly hunting for banned Iraqi arms since the start of war has not found any evidence of their existence, it was reported.

Task Force 20, the American army's top commando unit, was deployed to Iraq ahead of the ground invasion to search sites suspected of containing chemical, biological or nuclear arms before they could be hidden or destroyed.

Its speed and advanced detection technology - including DNA testing and mobile laboratories - gave it a huge advantage over the 75th Exploitation Task Force, the conventional military unit looking for weapons.

The team initially sent a stream of promising reports to planners which led to confident predictions from the Bush administration that weapons of mass destruction would be uncovered.

But despite an extensive search, it has found no evidence of an illegal arms program that was cited by the US government as a justification for invading Iraq, American officials told The Washington Post.

Task Force 20 has successfully captured as many as half of the "high value" weapons scientists and Baath Party leaders now in US custody, but none of these has given any clues to the whereabouts of banned weapons.

The top weapons' scientists, including Rihab Rashid Taha, dubbed Dr Germ, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a microbiologist nicknamed Mrs Anthrax, have disclosed almost nothing.

"What they are saying is largely BS - 'I was not very close to Saddam,' 'I don't know anything about WMD,"' a national security official told the Post. "It's all very orchestrated."

US Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted the intelligence about illegal arms was "not a figment of somebody's imagination".

"These were real weapons, real programs, that Saddam Hussein refused to come forward and explain," he said.

"Do you want to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt? Well, we didn't. And now we don't have to worry about it anymore."

But a former UN weapons inspector has claimed every intelligence lead from America and the UK about Saddam's alleged banned arms was "absolute rubbish".

British-born chemical engineer Steve Allison said that in the three months he worked in Iraq before the war, inspection teams were often sent to sites named by the US and British, where no evidence of weapons was found.

posted 06-14-2003 09:41 PM            

What? a missle that can shoot 100 miles?

OooooHH Scary!

posted 06-14-2003 09:42 PM            

Regardless, they are illegal under the resolution which many, many nations signed... Hell, even France.

It was nice that the put the missile launchers and triple A next to schools and residential areas though, nice touch.

posted 06-14-2003 10:23 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Chemmie:
bush looks bad regardless of what he does.

[Edited 3 times, lastly by ChemCaptain on 06-14-2003]

---

Problem chemmie is bush looks bad because of what he does!

and the lies he and his minions tell!

God!
If only they were only lying about sex
and nobody dying as a result.

Instead they lie about everything else and thousands die as a result of their lies.

posted 06-14-2003 10:44 PM            

bush looks really good...

matter of fact he looks marvelous !

war is won

terrorism has been hindered

clinton recession over (6 quarters of growth) thanks to the bush administration

making an honest effort for middle east peace

stock market steaming up

retail store buying up

consumer confidence up

tax rebates in the mail july first

payroll tax reduction july first

action on medicare reform and a prescription drug bill coming soon

I could type good positive news all night...but I'm tired...

this president has gotten more done for the people in two and a half years than clinton did in eight...

anyone that thinks different is just another uniformed moron...

posted 06-15-2003 05:51 AM            

Guess I'm a "moron" then because from what I can see, things are looking BAD for this country any way you slice it.

We have an administration that LIES to go to war.

Highest unemployment in 20 years

Largest budget defecit in the last 100 years

Consumer confidence is VERY low

Most People are LESS able to take care of themselves than they were 10 years ago.

Terrorism is SPREADING thanks to anger over Bu$h's warmongering.

Right now America is one of the most hated nations in the world

posted 06-15-2003 06:10 AM            

By John David Rose
Think About It

The fabric of lies the Bush administration wove to hoodwink the American public into supporting the war on Iraq is starting to unravel.

Right after Bush's State of the Union speech back in January this column declared: "Proof that Saddam is a threat? There is no proof. Bush was blowing smoke. Saddam poses less threat than the flu."

Anyone with an ear for flummery knew the American people were being whipsawed with phony-baloney warnings.

As one among a rising flood of belated doubters, Warren Strobel of the Knight Ridder News Service wrote, "President Bush and his top aides made prewar claims about Iraq's weapons programs that weren't always backed up by available U.S. intelligence and painted a threatening picture far starker than what American spies knew."

We now learn the exact opposite of what we were told by Bush and Colin Powell about an al-Qaida/Hussein connection. There was none.

From a New York Times report on June 9, 2002:[MSOffice1] "Two of the highest-ranking leaders of al-Qaida in American custody told the CIA in separate interrogations that the terrorist organization did not work jointly with the Iraqi government, that bin Laden had vetoed the idea."

Most Americans sensed that they were being led down the garden path, but couldn't imagine anyone so callous as to put our troops' lives at risk without solid evidence.

Apologists are now saying the war was to save Iraqis from a murderous despot. But that wasn't the reason Bush gave us. There are murderous despots all over the world. Why Hussein? Why Iraq?

The answer is Hussein was a known bad guy. The war would be a walkover. Bush would be a victorious commander in chief.

Bush's inner circle could care less about despots. They desperately need something to make sure Bush II is re-elected. Their agenda - to gut all of the social programs of Roosevelt's New Deal and Truman's Fair Deal - cannot be pursued unless Republicans dominate Washington.

With the economy going to hell in a hand-basket and most Americans dismissing his vaunted tax cut as unwise and unnecessary, they decided the only way to ensure Bush's re-election was to appeal to our patriotism.

The bitter truth for the families of the 200 American war dead is that their lives were sacrificed for Bush's re-election. Liberty and terrorism had nothing to do with it. The war was a calculated campaign ploy - scare the American people enough and they'll agree to anything. Even send their kids to die.

Spin-meisters of the administration are frantically looking for someone to blame for the egg on Bush's face. Fingers are being pointed at the CIA.

But the president was fed bad intelligence from his own "brain trust" of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Pearl.

They're also trying to change the subject, from Iraq back to terrorism, exploiting every possible too-horrible-to-contemplate "what if" terrorists might think up.

Yet very few Americans, including New Yorkers, are quaking in their boots. We're not as dumb as they think we are. We can smell a rat. Now we smell somebody's goose cooking.

All you Bush-lovers out there: Bush hornswoggled you with his fairy tales of imminent threats. 'Fess up and admit it. You got taken big-time. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

posted 06-15-2003 06:25 AM            

WMD Doublethink:
Bush’s Watergate

By Michelle Mairesse
http://www.hermes-press.com/wmd_gate.htm

"It is not merely that speeches, statistics, and records of every kind must be constantly brought up to date in order to show that the predictions of the Party were in all cases right. It is also that no change of doctrine or in political alignment can ever be admitted."

George Orwell, 1984

The Bush administration‘s commitment to Orwellian Doublethink and Doublespeak intensifies with every new disclosure of the deceit and trumped-up intelligence that fueled our invasion of Iraq. They promised us smoking guns but produced smoke screens.

Behind a series of smoke screens, the administration plotted the "preemptive" attack on a nation that presented no credible threat to the United States.

Although neoconservatives in the current Bush administration had urged Clinton to attack Iraq as early as 1998, the American public only got the first inkling of the neocon plan when Vice President Cheney began making incendiary speeches in 2002. Speaking at a Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in late August, he unequivocally declared, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

The source for much of Cheney’s information was Iraqi defector and former head of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel. Cheney remarked that Kamel's story "should serve as a reminder to all that we often learned more as the result of defections than we learned from the inspection regime itself."

Cheney and his war party were dissatisfied with the intelligence provided by the established agencies. For one thing, the CIA refused to credit the neocon claim that Saddam Hussein had been involved in the 9/11 attack. Shortly after the World Trade Center went up in flames, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld set up a new intelligence agency, the Office of Special Plans, headed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. It would be independent of both the CIA and Pentagon and accountable only to Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. Critics would accuse the Office of Special Plans of cherry-picking intelligence reports by suppressing information that undermined the war party agenda.

Seymour Hersh details the agency’s evolution in the New Yorker (May 12, 2003). He quotes a former intelligence official’s assessment. of the Office of Special Plans.

"‘One of the reasons I left was my sense that they were using the intelligence from the C.I.A. and other agencies only when it fit their agenda. They didn't like the intelligence they were getting, and so they brought in people to write the stuff. They were so crazed and so far out and so difficult to reason with -- to the point of being bizarre. Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God.’ He added, ‘If it doesn't fit their theory, they don't want to accept it.’"

Their agenda was to topple Saddam, occupy Iraq, and control Iraq’s oil reserves and the Caspian Basin.

To justify an American attack on Iraq, Bush administration officials insisted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that were hidden from the United Nations weapons inspection team. The inspection team was moving so slowly, they argued, that Iraq could deploy its weapons at a moment’s notice. By January, Wolfowitz was informing the Council on Foreign Relations that the U.S. should move swiftly to prevent Saddam Hussein from using his weapons of mass destruction. "We don’t have a lot of time. Time is running out," he said.

In October, President Bush told a Cincinnati audience that Iraq possessed and was producing biological weapons and was seeking nuclear weapons. "We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas." He alluded to Iraq’s alleged fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles poised to disperse chemical or biological weapons over the United States. He repeated his claim that Iraq was going nuclear.

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his ‘nuclear mujahideen’-- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Bush, too, relied on Kamel’s testimony. He stated as much.
"In 1995, after several years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq's military industries defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions."

On February 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell testified at length before the United Nations Security Council. He asserted that
"It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons. The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law."

The Kamel testimony, rather than bolstering the administration’s case, demolished it. Among Kamel’s interviewers were the former executive chairman of Unscom, a deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and head of the inspections team in Iraq, and the former deputy director for operations of Unscom. The interview transcript contains these statements:

"I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons--biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed.

"When asked if he had restarted VX production after the Iran-Iraq war, Kamel replied, "We changed the factory into pesticide production. Part of the establishment started to produce medicine [...] We gave instructions [sic] not to produce chemical weapons."

According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), the above quotes from Bush and Powell "refer to anthrax and VX produced by Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War. The administration has cited various quantities of chemical and biological weapons on many other occasions--weapons that Iraq produced but which remain unaccounted for. All of these claims refer to weapons produced before 1991.

"But according to Kamel's transcript, Iraq destroyed all of these weapons in 1991. According to Newsweek, Kamel told the same story to CIA analysts in August 1995. If that is true, all of these U.S. officials have had access to Kamel's statements that the weapons were destroyed. Their repeated citations of his testimony-- without revealing that he also said the weapons no longer exist-- suggests that the administration might be withholding critical evidence. In particular, it casts doubt on the credibility of Powell's February 5 presentation to the United Nations, which was widely hailed at the time for its persuasiveness. To clear up the issue, journalists might ask the CIA to release the transcripts of its own conversations with Kamel."

On September 7, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, televised live from Camp David, announced that the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had issued a new report saying that Iraq was six months away from building a nuclear weapon. The president declared, "I don’t know what more evidence we need."

But they would need a lot more evidence. What they had was bogus. Washington Times reporter Joseph Curl revealed on September 27 that there was no report of any kind from the IAEA saying Saddam was six months away from a nuclear weapon. On the contrary, a spokesman for the IAEA told Curl that when the inspectors withdrew from Iraq in 1998, "We had concluded that we had neutralized their nuclear-weapons program. We had confiscated their fissile material. We had destroyed all their key buildings and equipment."

Washington and London stopped referring to the non-existent IAEA document and began to tout other and equally bogus documentation for the claims that Saddam Hussein was armed to the teeth. Their next caper sounds like something out of a comic spy novel.

In September, the United States and Britain began referring to certain documents they had passed on to the United Nations. The documents, a series of letters exchanged between officials in Iraq and Niger, allegedly proved Iraq had attempted to buy significant amounts of uranium from Africa two years earlier. After independent experts had examined the documents, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Security Council on March 7 that the documents were "not authentic." Among other defects, the forgeries included names and titles that did not match those of the individuals in office on the dates the letters were written.

On June 12, 2003, rather late in the game, we learn from a "senior intelligence official" that the CIA had investigated the documents early in 2002 and concluded they were phony, but had not revealed detailed results of its investigation to the White House or other government agencies. The "senior intelligence official" attributed this oversight to "extremely sloppy" handling of evidence.

This is doubtless the war party version of events, because the anonymous official adds, "It is only one fact and not the reason we went to war. There was a lot more."

If there was a lot more, why is President Bush backing away from his earlier declarations that Iraq was bristling with weapons of mass destruction? These days he alludes only to programs for weapons of mass destruction--programs, not actual weapons.

After presenting the neocon-hawk version of the phony letter caper, The Washington Post account continues with the CIA version of events:

"However, a senior CIA analyst said the case ‘is indicative of larger problems’ involving the handling of intelligence about Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda, which the administration cited as justification for war. ‘Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was [consistent] was not seriously scrutinized,’ the analyst said."

The document most damaging to the war party’s case was first leaked June 6, 2003. The Defense Intelligence Agency report, titled "Iraq: Key Weapons Facilities--An Operational Support Study" and dated September 2002, states that

"There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has--or will--establish its chemical warfare agent-production facilities." In other words, the D.I.A. had no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or posed an imminent threat to the United States.

The war party continued to beat the drums.

Both President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell cited evidence that Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes, which it would then use to produce enriched uranium--proof positive that Saddam was proceeding with a nuclear weapons program. Not only did Director General of the IAEA ElBaradei report that his United Nations team, using advanced radiation detectors, had found no evidence of banned weapons or nuclear material, but also other experts denied that the aluminum tubes were suitable for weapons production.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said he had briefed Powell’s staff on his institute’s findings about the tubes before Powell brought the issue to the Security Council.

"Despite being presented with the falseness of this claim, the administration persists in making misleading arguments about the significance of the tubes," Albright said.

Secretary of State Powell’s February 5, 2003 presentation before the Security Council included references to an "updated" intelligence dossier. Two days later, the updated intelligence dossier self-destructed. Embarrassed British officials admitted that the bulk of the dossier had plagiarized published sources, including Jane’s Intelligence Review and a graduate student thesis assessing Iraq’s weapons capability in 1991.

Prime Minister Tony Blair barely acknowledged the annihilation of yet another fake document as he pointed to a new report and announced that Iraq was able to activate its chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes. Anonymous officials revealed that Blair had pressured the heads of security services six times to come up with "harder" information.

Based on that hardened information, British troops served alongside American troops in Iraq when the "Coalition of the Willing" invaded Iraq. Now critics are asking Blair why no chemical or biological weapons have been found.

Robin Cook, former foreign minister of Britain and a Cabinet member before resigning over the decision to go to war with Iraq, answered that question in the Los Angeles Times ( June 6, 2003).

"The least plausible explanation is that Hussein destroyed his means of defense on the eve of an invasion. The more plausible explanation is that he did not have any large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction."

Cook continues, "There was no hard intelligence of a current weapons program that would represent a new and compelling threat to our interests. Nor did the dossier at any stage admit the basic scientific fact that biological and chemical agents have a finite shelf life --a principle understood by every pharmacist. Go to your medicine chest and check out the existence of an expiration date on nearly everything you possess. Nerve agents of good quality have a shelf life of about five years and anthrax in liquid solution of about three years. Hussein's stocks were not of good quality. The Pentagon itself concluded that Iraqi chemical munitions were of such poor standard that they were usable for only a few weeks.

"Even if Hussein had destroyed none of his arsenal from 1991, it would long ago have become useless."

Coalition troops advanced to Baghdad but found no weapons of mass destruction. They were taken aback. On June 6, 2003 the Los Angeles Times asked Lt. General James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, about the weapons of mass destruction U.S. intelligence had described. He said,

“We were simply wrong. It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered weapons in Iraq. Believe me, it’s not for lack of trying. We’ve been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwait border and Baghdad, but they’re simply not there.”
The war parties in Washington and London continued to hope. When troops found two mobile laboratory trailer-trucks, there was jubilation in the Bush and Blair camps. Powell had apprised the Security Council that 18 such weapon-laden vans were cruising around Iraq. Now President Bush prematurely announced the discovery of the smoking gun. Blair concurred.

The Observer (June 8, 2003) penetrated their smoke screen, asserting that “chemical weapons experts, engineers, chemists and military systems experts contacted by The Observer over the past week, say the layout and equipment found on the trailers is entirely inconsistent with the vehicles being mobile labs.”

Other experts chimed in, agreeing with the Observer’s conclusion: the two trailers of mass destruction were actually weather balloon labs.

As the war party’s desperation grows, we can expect more episodes like this, and their self-serving orations will be met with cool skepticism.

The mood in America is changing. Representative Henry Waxman wants to know how the president could have referenced the forged uranium letters in his State of the Union Speech. He told Salon,

“The most powerful argument that President Bush made to take the country to war was that Iraq was soon to become a nuclear power and that would change things dramatically--- Saddam Hussein would have the ability to blackmail other countries in the region and it also meant that any other kind of military action we might have to take against them in the future would be far more serious. It was the reason, quite frankly, that brought me to vote for the resolution."

Eric Margolis writes in his June 8 Toronto Star column that he has been contacted by individuals and groups of angry retired intelligence officers.

“According to intelligence sources outraged by the corruption and perversion of the national intelligence function for political reasons, the main source of lies and distortions about Iraq was Iraqi exiles, many on the payroll of the U.S. government.

“These anti-Saddam exiles fed the Pentagon and New York Times a stream of phony claims about Iraqi WMD. Though scorned by the CIA, they were closely linked to American neo-conservatives in key positions within the Bush administration.

“When the CIA couldn't find hard evidence of Iraqi WMD a new intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, was created.

“Intelligence community protests over this blatant politicization of national security were ignored. In fact, two more anti-Iraq intel teams, led by Pentagon neo-cons, were set up and all three reportedly fed exaggerated information to Bush and Blair. Similar reports came to Powell.”

Vincent Cannistraro, a former director of counterrorism at the CIA, described to Sify News (June 3) the "very big disconnect" existing "between the intelligence as reflected by open statements by the administration before the invasion of Iraq and what they've found on the ground."

“Any kind of proof seen today is ‘a far cry from the report put out in October 2002 when the Central Intelligence Agency estimated that there were several hundred tons of biological and chemical agents stockpiled in the hands of Saddam Hussein.’

"They haven't found anything like that at all, and certainly nothing that has been weaponized. Clearly there is a lot of accounting to be done and this is certainly an embarrassment to the administration."

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman believes that anyone who talks about an intelligence failure is missing the point.

“The problem lay not with intelligence professionals, but with the Bush and Blair administrations. They wanted a war, so they demanded reports supporting their case, while dismissing contrary evidence. . .”

“The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history--worse than Iran-contra, worse than Watergate.”

Krugman got it right. Let the investigations begin.

posted 06-15-2003 03:47 PM            

if they are both indexed to the amount of people then the ratio is about the same as it always will be...some just don't want to work....

posted 06-16-2003 10:16 AM            

you are so full of $#!+ it isn't even funny.
(They don't want to work) That is a crock if I ever heard it. Even Michael Savage couldn't have come up with better propaganda than that statement. You are 100% OUT OF TOUCH with reality.

posted 06-17-2003 12:38 AM            

Breaking News 6/13/03
Second intelligence report: "No Reliable Information" Iraqis Stockpiling Chemical Weapons

by David E. Kaplan and Mark Mazzetti
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/usinfo/press/intell.htm

In October 2002, a classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared jointly by U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons. But one month later, the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a report stating that there was "no reliable information" showing that Iraq was actually producing or stockpiling chemical weapons, U.S. News has learned.

posted 06-17-2003 01:01 AM            

please don't beat me !

what was saddam trying to cover up then ?

all he had to do was not kick inspectors out like he did...conform with UN resolutions...and agree to not invade iran and kuwait again and I'm sure he would still be there filling up mass graves and shredding little children...

right ?

posted 06-17-2003 01:12 AM            

Chasing After Saddam's Weapons

By Charles Krauthammer
Townhall.com | June 16, 2003

snippet:

Everyone thought Saddam had weapons because we knew for sure he had them five years ago and there was no evidence that he disposed of them. The WMD- hyping charge is nothing more than the Iraqi museum story Part II: A way for opponents of the war--deeply embarrassed by the mass graves, torture chambers and grotesque palaces discovered after the war--to change the subject and relieve themselves of the shame of having opposed the liberation of 25 million people.

posted 06-17-2003 07:25 AM            

In addition, they all agreed that WMDs were there. They all had access to the same intelligence. If Bush was lying then, we have to say they were lying as well. (Of course, anyone who follows politics knows, Democrats do little well).

posted 06-17-2003 08:12 AM            

Personally, I hope they light a fire under Bush's @$$ in the upcoming inquiry.

posted 06-17-2003 10:00 AM            

"what was saddam trying to cover up then ?"

posted 06-17-2003 11:16 AM               

I'm incorporating many of the stories you've got here into my newsletters. Especially since the media WHORES are still that:

Time To Accept TV For What It Is... http://www.rense.com/general38/tv.htm

US Media Caved In To The Bush Agenda http://www.rense.com/general38/meid.htm

Fibbing It Up at Fox http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/steinreich8.html

Clear Channel Is A Subsidiary Of Bush, Inc http://www.rense.com/general38/clkear.htm

Just like the Bush WHORES on this forum! Kneel and service your QUEER NWO master boys!

That's OK, we KNOW God will win in the END. And boy is it CLOSE NOW!! The wheat shall be separated from the CHAFF and the chaff shall be BURNED!! Enjoy WHORES!

Still trying to figure out how to post a photo on this forum.... Somebody let me know: hitech@bluemarble.net