Originally Posted By Darkbeer October 9th, 1999 Letter to President Clinton Signed by Senators Levin, Lieberman, Lautenberg, Dodd, Kerrey, Feinstein, Mikulski, Daschle, Breaux, Johnson, Inouye, Landrieu, Ford and Kerry -- all Democrats >>"We urge you, after consulting with Congress and consistent with the US Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions, including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."<< John Kerry, January 23rd, 2003 >>"Without question we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator leading an impressive regime. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he's miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. His consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction." << Sandy Berger February 18th, 1998 >>"He''ll use those weapons of mass destruction again as he has 10 times since 1983." << Senator Carl Levin September 19th, 2002 >>"We begin with a common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." << Senator Hillary Clinton, October 10th of 2002 >>"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock. His missile delivery capability, his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists including Al-Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." << Madeleine Albright November 10th, 1999 >>"Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." <<
Originally Posted By Darkbeer Robert Byrd October 3rd, 2002 >>"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of '98. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons." << Al Gore, September 23rd, 2002 >>"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." << Bill Clinton, February 17th, 1998 >>"If Saddam rejects peace, and we have to use force, our purpose is clear: We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." << Madeleine Albright, February 1st, 2003 >>"We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and the security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction." << Nancy Pelosi December 16th, 1998 >>"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." << Al Gore September 23rd, 2002 >>"We know that he has stored nuclear supplies, secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." <<
Originally Posted By Darkbeer John Kerry October 9th, 2002 >>"I will be voting to give the president of the US the authority to use force if necessary to disarm Saddam because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." << Ted Kennedy September 27th, 2002 >>"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."<< Jay Rockefeller October 10th, 2002 >>"There was unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. We also should remember that we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." <<
Originally Posted By Darkbeer <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_110205/content/excerpts_from_the_silberman_robb_report.guest.html" target="_blank">http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/ho me/daily/site_110205/content/excerpts_from_the_silberman_robb_report.guest.html</a> >>Below are excerpts from the Report to the President by The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction -- also known as the Silberman-Robb Report -- which make it clear that allegations that intelligence was warped or manipulated are false. Below are some specific findings from the report which came out in March 2005: (i) "Many observers of the Intelligence Community have expressed concern that Intelligence Community judgments concerning Iraq's purported WMD programs may have been warped by inappropriate political pressure... The Commission has found no evidence of 'politicization' of the Intelligence Community's assessments concerning Iraq's reported WMD programs. No analytical judgments were changed in response to political pressure to reach a particular conclusion." -- Intelligence Capabilities Commission Report, pages 187-188. (ii) "We looked very closely at that question [Administration pressuring intelligence analysts]. Every member of the commission was sensitive to the number of questions that have been raised with respect to the, what we'll call politicization, or however you want to describe it. And we examined every single instance that had been referred to, in print or otherwise, to see if there was any occasion where a member of the administration or anyone else had asked an analyst or anybody else associated with the intelligence community to change a position that they were taking or whether they felt there was any undo influence, and we found absolutely no instance." -- Charles S. Robb, Co-Chairman, The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, March 31 press conference. (iii) "The Intelligence Community’s Iraq assessments were ... riddled with errors. Contrary to what some defenders of the Intelligence Community have since asserted, these errors were not the result of a few harried months in 2002. Most of the fundamental errors were made and communicated to policymakers well before the now-infamous NIE of October 2002, and were not corrected in the months between the NIE and the start of the war. They were not isolated or random failings. Iraq had been an intelligence challenge at the forefront of U.S. attention for over a decade. It was a known adversary that had already fought one war with the United States and seemed increasingly likely to fight another. But, after ten years of effort, the Intelligence Community still had no good intelligence on the status of Iraq’s weapons programs." -- Intelligence Capabilities Commission Report Overview, page 9. (iv) "Post-war investigations concluded that Curveball's [the code-name of an Iraqisource] was not influenced by, controlled by, or connected to, the INC [Iraqi National Congress]. In fact, over all, CIA's post-war investigations revealed that INC-related sources had a minimal impact on pre-war assessments." -- Intelligence Capabilities Commission Report Overview, page 108. (v) "The NIE simply didn't communicate how weak the underlying intelligence was. This was, moreover, a problem that was not limited to the NIE. Our review found that after the publication of the October 2002 NIE but before Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 2003 address to the United Nations, intelligence officials within the CIA failed to convey to policymakers new information casting serious doubt on the reliability of a human intelligence source known as 'Curveball.' This occurred despite the pivotal role Curveball’s information played in the Intelligence Community’s assessment of Iraq’s biological weapons programs, and in spite of Secretary Powell’s efforts to strip every dubious piece of information out of his proposed speech. In this instance, once again, the Intelligence Community failed to give policymakers a full understanding of the frailties of the intelligence on which they were relying." -- Intelligence Capabilities Commission Report Overview, pages 10-11. << Here is a link to the full report... <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/wmd/" target="_blank">http://www.whitehouse.gov/wmd/</a>
Originally Posted By Darkbeer <a href="http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_1.html" target="_blank">http://www.worldtribune.com/wo rldtribune/breaking_1.html</a> >>The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003. The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program. The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared. <<
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan "The president has told us that we must attack Iraq because our nation is in imminent danger from Saddam Hussein. We have received no proof of immediate danger, and scant evidence that Iraq has the means or intent to use weapons of mass destruction against us. We have not been told why the danger is greater today than it was a year or two ago or why we must rush to war rather than pursuing other options. We have not given the United Nations time to try to reach diplomatic solutions." Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland September 30, 2002
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Hmmm... not a single quote from any of those people saying "therefore, we need to invade and occupy that country." That's the big leap that always gets ignored.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan I'm thinking of cancelling my newspaper subscription. Darkbeer reads me half the story every day anyway.
Originally Posted By Darkbeer <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3872201.stm" target="_blank">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wor ld/middle_east/3872201.stm</a> >>The US has revealed that it removed more than 1.7 metric tons of radioactive material from Iraq in a secret operation last month. "This operation was a major achievement," said US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in a statement. He said it would keep "potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists". Along with 1.77 tons of enriched uranium, about 1,000 "highly radioactive sources" were also removed. <<
Originally Posted By SuperDry Also, note that the Congress does not operate its own intelligence agency. They rely on information collected, analyzed, and filtered by executive branch agencies. If these agencies are biasing the intelligence or releasing stuff that's true but only half the truth, then it's no wonder that members of Congress might come away with misinformed opinions.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <And we examined every single instance that had been referred to, in print or otherwise, to see if there was any occasion where a member of the administration or anyone else had asked an analyst or anybody else associated with the intelligence community to change a position that they were taking or whether they felt there was any undo influence, and we found absolutely no instance."> They must not have looked very deeply. <a href="http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=51202" target="_blank">http://www.laweekly.com/ink/pr intme.php?eid=51202</a> Q: "How did you experience this in your day-to-day work? A: There was a sort of groupthink, an adopted storyline: We are going to invade Iraq and we are going to eliminate Saddam Hussein and we are going to have bases in Iraq. This was all a given even by the time I joined them, in May of 2002. Q: You heard this in staff meetings? A; The discussions were ones of this sort of inevitability. The concerns were only that some policymakers still had to get onboard with this agenda. Not that this agenda was right or wrong — but that we needed to convince the remaining holdovers. Colin Powell, for example. There was a lot of frustration with Powell; they said a lot of bad things about him in the office. They got very angry with him when he convinced Bush to go back to the U.N. and forced a four-month delay in their invasion plans. General Tony Zinni is another one. Zinni, the combatant commander of Central Command, Tommy Franks’ predecessor — a very well-qualified guy who knows the Middle East inside out, knows the military inside out, a Marine, a great guy. He spoke out publicly as President Bush’s Middle East envoy about some of the things he saw. Before he was removed by Bush, I heard Zinni called a traitor in a staff meeting. They were very anti-anybody who might provide information that affected their paradigm. They were the spin enforcers." (snip) Q:"So Shulsky was the sort of controller, the disciplinarian, the overseeing monitor of the propaganda flow. From where you sat, did you see him manipulate the information? A: We had a whole staff to help him do that, and he was the approving authority. I can give you one example of how the talking points were altered. We were instructed by Bill Luti, on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, on behalf of Abe Shulsky, that we would not write anything about Iraq, WMD or terrorism in any papers that we prepared for our superiors except as instructed by the Office of Special Plans. And it would provide to us an electronic document of talking points on these issues. So I got to see how they evolved. It was very clear to me that they did not evolve as a result of new intelligence, of improved intelligence, or any type of seeking of the truth. The way they evolved is that certain bullets were dropped or altered based on what was being reported on the front pages of the Washington Post or The New York Times." Q: Can you be specific? A: One item that was dropped was in November [2002]. It was the issue of the meeting in Prague prior to 9/11 between Mohammed Atta and a member of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence force. We had had this in our talking points from September through mid-November. And then it dropped out totally. No explanation. Just gone. That was because the media reported that the FBI had stepped away from that, that the CIA said it didn’t happen. Q: Let’s clarify this. Talking points are generally used to deal with media. But you were a desk officer, not a politician who had to go and deal with the press. So are you saying the Office of Special Plans provided you a schematic, an outline of the way major points should be addressed in any report or analysis that you developed regarding Iraq, WMD or terrorism? A: That’s right. And these did not follow the intent, the content or the accuracy of intelligence . . . Q: They were political . . . A: They were political, politically manipulated. They did have obviously bits of intelligence in them, but they were created to propagandize. So we inside the Pentagon, staff officers and senior administration officials who might not work Iraq directly, were being propagandized by this same Office of Special Plans. Q: In the 10 months you worked in that office in the run-up to the war, was there ever any open debate? The public, at least, was being told at the time that there was a serious assessment going on regarding the level of threat from Iraq, the presence or absence of WMD, et cetera. Was this debated inside your office at the Pentagon? A: No. Those things were not debated. To them, Saddam Hussein needed to go. Q: You believe that decision was made by the time you got there, almost a year before the war? A: That decision was made by the time I got there. So there was no debate over WMD, the possible relations Saddam Hussein may have had with terrorist groups and so on. They spent their energy gathering pieces of information and creating a propaganda storyline, which is the same storyline we heard the president and Vice President Cheney tell the American people in the fall of 2002. The very phrases they used are coming back to haunt them because they are blatantly false and not based on any intelligence. The OSP and the Vice President’s Office were critical in this propaganda effort — to convince Americans that there was some just requirement for pre-emptive war. Q: What do you believe the real reasons were for the war? A: The neoconservatives needed to do more than just topple Saddam Hussein. They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted permanent basing in Iraq. There are several reasons why they wanted to do that. None of those reasons, of course, were presented to the American people or to Congress. Q: So you don’t think there was a genuine interest as to whether or not there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? A: It’s not about interest. We knew. We knew from many years of both high-level surveillance and other types of shared intelligence, not to mention the information from the U.N., we knew, we knew what was left [from the Gulf War] and the viability of any of that. Bush said he didn’t know. The truth is, we know [Saddam] didn’t have these things. Almost a billion dollars has been spent — a billion dollars! — by David Kay’s group to search for these WMD, a total whitewash effort. They didn’t find anything, they didn’t expect to find anything. Q: So if, as you argue, they knew there weren’t any of these WMD, then what exactly drove the neoconservatives to war? A: The neoconservatives pride themselves on having a global vision, a long-term strategic perspective. And there were three reasons why they felt the U.S. needed to topple Saddam, put in a friendly government and occupy Iraq. One of those reasons is that sanctions and containment were working and everybody pretty much knew it. Many companies around the world were preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq. And those sanctions were going to be lifted soon, Saddam would still be in place, and we would get no financial benefit. The second reason has to do with our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. And also there was dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia. So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter — to secure the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important — that is, if you hold that is America’s role in the world. Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in. The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way, long before 9/11, in November 2000 — selling his oil for euros. The oil sales permitted in that program aren’t very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving to the euro. The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but it’s not backed up like it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro, that could cause massive, almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar. Q: At the time you left the military, a year ago, just how great was the influence of this neoconservative faction on Pentagon policy? A:When it comes to Middle East policy, they were in complete control, at least in the Pentagon. There was some debate at the State Department. Q:Indeed, when you were still in uniform and writing a Web column anonymously, you expressed your bitter disappointment when Secretary of State Powell — in your words — eventually “capitulated.†A: He did. When he made his now-famous power-point slide presentation at the U.N., he totally capitulated. It meant he was totally onboard. Whether he believed it or not.
Originally Posted By StillThePassHolder "I'm thinking of cancelling my newspaper subscription. Darkbeer reads me half the story every day anyway." ROTFLMAO. I'd suggest we get him to start posting the comics but he'd probably edit out the punchlines.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy <<Hmmm... not a single quote from any of those people saying "therefore, we need to invade and occupy that country." That's the big leap that always gets ignored.>> Funny how liberals use the argument from Dabob when they get busted on their insistance that Bush lied!!! Who cares who took us to war, the democrats were saying the exact same stuff Bush was saying even before Bush said it. Yet they want to claim Bush lied?? Exactly how does that work? Also, if he lied, then why did pretty much all the democrats vote to give Bush the power to go to war against Iraq? Talk about no backbone or spine, then doing a massive flip flop for the entire world to see. Sorry libs, but America is on to you once again. Time for a new " scandal ".
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>I'd suggest we get him to start posting the comics but he'd probably edit out the punchlines.<< LOL!
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< Also, if he lied, then why did pretty much all the democrats vote to give Bush the power to go to war against Iraq? >>> This has already been answered. <<< "I'm thinking of cancelling my newspaper subscription. Darkbeer reads me half the story every day anyway." >>> Ah, but it's a very carefully selected half! It's interesting because I tend to read the topic descriptions before who posted it. Quite often, I'll read the topic description, have a flash of realization along the lines of "this is a news headline written or story selected for the purpose of justifying the right-wing agenda or discrediting someone that opposes it" as opposed to simply bringing up a topic for conversation, followed by a moment later by "Oh, it must be another Darkbeer post." Rarely am I disappointed.
Originally Posted By Spree <<<Hmmm... not a single quote from any of those people saying "therefore, we need to invade and occupy that country." That's the big leap that always gets ignored>>> Hey! Guess what? There is this neat little feature here on LP that tells you who started a thread without the need to read the thread. If you don't like Darkbeers posting style stay away...you aren't adding anything to the discussion by attacking the OP personally.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer Why don't we hear what people have to say about WMDs in 2005, Darkbeer? Now that we know the intelligence from 2002 that most of those quotes were based on was dead wrong.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< If you don't like Darkbeers posting style stay away...you aren't adding anything to the discussion by attacking the OP personally. >>> I assume that this comment was directed at me. If you will read what I said, you'll notice that I was not attacking the OP personally, but only his posting style. I actually hold the OP in high personal regard. But his posting style in this thread is quite literally "cut and paste." The entirety of the first four posts was cut-and-pasted directly from Rush Limbaugh's website, with a tacit reference provided only in the 4th post. Some people have commented on my repeated references to the "noise machine" as being offensive and how some people here succumb to the propaganda. Some people have commented on how my references to the above unfairly paint some people as unable to think for themselves. Regarding this thread alone, I would have to point to how the first 4 posts were literally cut-and-pasted from the Rush Limbaugh website, without as much as a single byte of original comment, opinion, or discussion.
Originally Posted By planodisney So are you saying that because those quotes came from Rush's website that they are not accurate. I think they are absolutely accurate, and it doesnt matter what site they came from. i think it is so funny how people let commentators like Rush or hannity get them so angry. Or michael Moore on the other side. At least those people state that they are conservative or liberal from the get go. SuperDry, you are absolutley obsessed with rush and hannity, get over it man. Some of us like to listen to them, not to be brainwashed, but we feel that we get information that is consistantly lefty out of network news reports. The same reason you probably listen to public radio, watch keith oberman or read the san fransisco chronical, or the L.A. and New york Times. There is no difference. I take that back, there is a difference. Keith Oberman and the rest pretend to be un-biased journalists. A much greater offense than Rush and hannity.
