← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · weisbrot
Thread ID: 18178 | Posts: 13 | Started: 2005-05-10
2005-05-10 12:32 | User Profile
The U.S. media spun this as a strictly UK story, as did most of the international press. There has been little exposure and zero sustained attention on these documents; apparently their release is regarded as only an election issue.
In a sane world these documents would be collected as Exhibit 1 in the treason proceedings against Bush, Feith, Wolfowitz, Powell and the rest of the neoconservative criminals.
[url]http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=7803[/url]
ZNet | Race
Proof Bush Fixed The Facts
by Ray McGovern; TomPaine.com ; May 07, 2005
"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white - and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.
It has been a hard learning - that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.
Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents - this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international Truth-Telling Coalition or not, some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.
Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral. Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious questions. Or, worse still, the obvious questions did not occur.
Juggernaut Before The Horse
In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.
In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. The argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress and Parliament by conjuring up:
ââ¬Â¢ Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related;
ââ¬Â¢ Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa;
ââ¬Â¢ Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile biological weapons laboratories;
ââ¬Â¢ Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped missiles within 45 minutes of an order to do so;
ââ¬Â¢ Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London; and
ââ¬Â¢ A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure.
All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that "there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Another nugget from Dearlove's briefing is his bloodless comment that one of the U.S. military options under discussion involved "a continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli" - the clear implication being that planners of the air campaign would also see to it that an appropriate casus belli was orchestrated.
The discussion at 10 Downing St. on July 23, 2002 calls to mind the first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security Council (NSC) on Jan. 30, 2001, at which the president made it clear that toppling Saddam Hussein sat atop his to-do list, according to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil, who was there. O'Neil was taken aback that there was no discussion of why it was necessary to "take out" Saddam. Rather, after CIA Director George Tenet showed a grainy photo of a building in Iraq that he said might be involved in producing chemical or biological agents, the discussion proceeded immediately to which Iraqi targets might be best to bomb. Again, neither O'Neil nor the other participants asked the obvious questions. Another NSC meeting two days later included planning for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.
Obedience School
As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further grist for those who describe the U.K. prime minister as Bush's "poodle." The tone of the conversation bespeaks a foregone conclusion that Blair will wag his tail cheerfully and obey the learned commands. At one point he ventures the thought that, "If the political context were right, people would support regime change." This, after Attorney General Peter Goldsmith has already warned that the desire for regime change "was not a legal base for military action," - a point Goldsmith made again just 12 days before the attack on Iraq until he was persuaded by a phalanx of Bush administration lawyers to change his mind 10 days later.
The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action."
I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this meeting so jarring. Surely it is what one might expect, given all else we know. Yet seeing it in bloodless black and white somehow gives it more impact. And the implications are no less jarring.
One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington was his American counterpart, CIA director George Tenet. (And there is no closer relationship between two intelligence services than the privileged one between the CIA and MI-6.) Tenet, of course, knew at least as much as Dearlove, but nonetheless played the role of accomplice in serving up to Bush the kind of "slam-dunk intelligence" that he knew would be welcome. If there is one unpardonable sin in intelligence work, it is that kind of politicization. But Tenet decided to be a "team player" and set the tone.
Politicization: Big Time
Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what happened. The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was manufactured, with the president of the United States awarding foreman George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for his role in helping supervise the deceit. The British documents make clear that this was not a mere case of "leaning forward" in analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass deception - an order of magnitude more serious. No other conclusion is now possible.
Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former case officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."
Small wonder that, when the only U.S. analyst who met with the alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed "Curveball" raised strong doubt about Curveball's reliability before then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the fabrication about "mobile biological weapons trailers" before the United Nations, the analyst got this e-mail reply from his CIA supervisor:
"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about."
When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director late last year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees explaining the "rules of the road" - first and foremost, "We support the administration and its policies." So much for objective intelligence insulated from policy pressure.
Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized environment of Congress, brought with them a radically new ethos - one much more akin to that of Blair's courtiers than to that of earlier CIA directors who had the courage to speak truth to power.
Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence chiefs chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up" (as the British press puts it) intelligence to justify a prior decision for war. There is no word to describe the reaction of honest intelligence professionals to the corruption of our profession on a matter of such consequence. "Outrage" does not come close.
Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures
Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot who gave this latest British government document to The Sunday Times a debt of gratitude. Unauthorized disclosures are gathering steam. They need to increase quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well - the more so, inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's party-cannot be counted on to discharge its constitutional prerogative for oversight.
In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:
We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm's way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses bring them to light, the chances become less that a president could launch another unprovoked war - against, say, Iran.
Ray McGovern served 27 years as a CIA analyst and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour.
2005-05-10 14:07 | User Profile
The text of the memo:
[url]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html[/url]
[QUOTE]The secret Downing Street memo
SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY
DAVID MANNING From: Matthew Rycroft Date: 23 July 2002 S 195 /02
cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell
IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY
Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.
This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.
John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.
The two broad US options were:
(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).
(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.
The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:
(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.
(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.
(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.
The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.
The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.
The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.
The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.
On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.
For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.
The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.
John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.
The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.
Conclusions:
(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.
(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.
(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.
(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.
He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.
(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.
(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.
(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)
MATTHEW RYCROFT
(Rycroft was a Downing Street foreign policy aide)[/QUOTE]
2005-05-10 14:13 | User Profile
[QUOTE]For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.[/QUOTE]
This quote would seem to imply that the US and the UK governments genuinely did believe that Saddam possessed WMD, even in private. Assuming the memo is real, and not a "controlled leak", of course.
2005-05-13 10:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The U.S. media spun this as a strictly UK story, as did most of the international press. There has been little exposure and zero sustained attention on these documents; apparently their release is regarded as only an election issue.[/QUOTE]
Some US-based fall-out has started:
[url]http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/11/britain.war.memo/index.html[/url]
Bush asked to explain UK war memo
Thursday, May 12, 2005 Posted: 2:49 AM EDT (0649 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Eighty-nine Democratic members of the U.S. Congress last week sent President George W. Bush a letter asking for explanation of a secret British memo that said "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to support the Iraq war in mid-2002.
The timing of the memo was well before the president brought the issue to Congress for approval.
The Times of London newspaper published the memo -- actually minutes of a high-level meeting on Iraq held July 23, 2002 -- on May 1.
British officials did not dispute the document's authenticity, and Michael Boyce, then Britain's Chief of Defense Staff, told the paper that Britain had not then made a decision to follow the United States to war, but it would have been "irresponsible" not to prepare for the possibility.
The White House has not yet responded to queries about the congressional letter, which was released on May 6.
The letter, initiated by Rep. John Conyers, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the memo "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own administration..."
"While various individuals have asserted this to be the case before, including Paul O'Neill, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Richard Clarke, a former National Security Council official, they have been previously dismissed by your administration," the letter said.
But, the letter said, when the document was leaked Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman called it "nothing new."
In addition to Blair, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, MI6 chief Richard Dearlove and others attended the meeting.
A British official identified as "C" said that he had returned from a meeting in Washington and that "military action was now seen as inevitable" by U.S. officials.
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.
"The NSC had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
The memo further discussed the military options under consideration by the United States, along with Britain's possible role.
It quoted Hoon as saying the United States had not finalized a timeline, but that it would likely begin "30 days before the U.S. congressional elections," culminating with the actual attack in January 2003.
"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided," the memo said.
"But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."
The British officials determined to push for an ultimatum for Saddam to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq to "help with the legal justification for the use of force ... despite U.S. resistance."
Britain's attorney general, Peter Goldsmith, advised the group that "the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action" and two of three possible legal bases -- self-defense and humanitarian intervention -- could not be used.
The third was a U.N. Security Council resolution, which Goldsmith said "would be difficult."
Blair thought that "it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors."
"If the political context were right, people would support regime change," the memo said.
Later, the memo said, Blair would work to convince Bush that they should pursue the ultimatum with Saddam even though "many in the U.S. did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route."
2005-05-13 11:40 | User Profile
It sure looks like the proverbial smoking gun to me.
Not that most Americans will give a damn.
2005-05-13 23:23 | User Profile
[QUOTE=weisbrot]... [url]http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=7803[/url] ... In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy." ... Another NSC meeting two days later included planning for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth. ... Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former case officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it." ... Ray McGovern served 27 years as a CIA analyst and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour.[/QUOTE] "SCUM" is too good a word to describe these :censored: with.
Thank you weisbrot! And thank you Ray McGovern!
:cheers:
2005-05-15 09:00 | User Profile
Sadly the Neocons like their Marxist forefathers now how to use the "Big Lie."
2005-05-15 10:44 | User Profile
I don't know about you guys but to me in the old days everything from the US government was the truth until proven a lie but now everthing is a lie until proven true.
2005-05-15 17:55 | User Profile
Ponce,
Funny, I think the same way. The Bush Administration is nothing more than a carry on of the Clinton Administration. They're all liars unless proven otherwise.
2005-05-17 11:50 | User Profile
Funny how the White House decided to comment on this after ignoring it for so long. Usually, the Bush gang and its myrmidons on talk radio and Fox News are quick to denounce items like this and smear the person and/or organization that brought it to the public's attention.
CNN.com
White House challenges UK Iraq memo
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Claims in a recently uncovered British memo that intelligence was "being fixed" to support the Iraq war as early as mid-2002 are "flat out wrong," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Monday.
McClellan insisted the process leading up to the decision to go to war was "very public" -- and that the decision to invade in March 2003 was taken only after Iraq refused to comply with its "international obligations."
"The president of the United States, in a very public way, reached out to people across the world, went to the United Nations and tried to resolve this in a diplomatic manner," McClellan said.
"Saddam Hussein was the one, in the end, who chose continued defiance. And only then was the decision made, as a last resort, to go into Iraq."
[u]However, McClellan also said he had not seen the "specific memo," only reports of what it contained.[/u]
Earlier this month, the Times of London published the minutes of a meeting of top British officials in mid-2002, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's staunchest ally in the Iraq war.
According to the minutes cited by the Times, a British official identified as "C" said that he had returned from a meeting in Washington and that "military action was now seen as inevitable" by U.S. officials.
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," the memo said, according to the newspaper.
The minutes also quoted the unnamed British official as saying the U.S. National Security Council had "no patience" with taking the dispute to the United Nations and "no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record."
"There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action," the official said, according to the minutes published by the Times.
The memo also quoted British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that the final push to war would likely begin a month before the U.S. congressional elections in November 2002, with an actual attack coming in January 2003.
President Bush did begin trying to build public support for military action against Iraq during the mid-term election, which saw Republicans pick up seats in both the House and Senate. The invasion came four months later, in March 2003.
British officials have not disputed the authenticity of the memo published by the Times.
After the minutes of the meeting became public, 89 Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Bush asking for an explanation.
The memo "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war, as well as the integrity of your administration," the letter said.
However, McClellan also said he had not seen the "specific memo," only reports of what it contained.
And pigs fly...
I believe this as much as I believe that Bush always tells the truth. What a liar.
2005-05-17 14:08 | User Profile
Memo is interesting, though my grain of salt says "seen through a British lens." Noteworthy that Blair is not exercised by its leak.
Timeline issues.
In the fall of 2002, the additional pressure on Saddam via UN Security Council resolutions (yet another blast of hot air, of course). This allowed low probability political strategy of resumed progress on 12 years worth of ineffective embargo and "sanctions." Theme? Re energize the multilateral process, show Saddam a united front and send message "Quit messing about, mister." That gambit failed, no surprise, for lack of credible basis, or lack or art in statesmanship. Or was it a throw away from the get go, a "going through the motions" exercise? I'd like to see evidence to support that before I am content with some of the follow on assertions.
The what if: "What would be the chain of events had the 'OK, you guys can come in, there's nothing here, I have nothing to hide' been Saddam's response, induced by some behind the curtain nudges from French/Russian and even Chinese whispers? A good answer to that is all three have it in their interest to let America spend its power on Iraq, which frees them up elsewhere to worry about our sabre rattling less. Net result, Saddam confronted by the usually fractured international community, who he kept playing off against each other as per his standard MO.
I gather that the consensus here is that even the effort to harness the "legitimacy" of the UN was pure smokescreen.
Evidence in support includes the beginning of deployments in fall of Oct 2002, which could be explained away as "saber rattling" or "backing up our words with a more credible threat" should the unlikely occur and the French/Russians choose to stand up to resolve the "sanctions" issue. (Subsequent revelations in re oil no surprise here.)
What other evidence of the UN gambit as a smokescreen?
Angeleyes
2005-05-17 15:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angeleyes]The what if: "What would be the chain of events had the 'OK, you guys can come in, there's nothing here, I have nothing to hide' been Saddam's response, induced by some behind the curtain nudges from French/Russian and even Chinese whispers? [/QUOTE]
That pretty much WAS Saddam's response. I don't recall there being any obstructions to the weapons inspections. The bone of contention was that he hadn't given a "full and final account" of his WMD, in other words, they knew he had WMD previously but he couldn't prove that he'd destroyed them.
[QUOTE=Angeleyes]Evidence in support includes the beginning of deployments in fall of Oct 2002, which could be explained away as "saber rattling" or "backing up our words with a more credible threat" should the unlikely occur and the French/Russians choose to stand up to resolve the "sanctions" issue. (Subsequent revelations in re oil no surprise here.)
What other evidence of the UN gambit as a smokescreen?[/QUOTE]
This probably doesn't count as evidence so much as expert opinion, but during the coverage of the Iraq war on SBS television here in Australia, the network's resident military expert (a retired military officer - can't remember his name) bluntly stated that in his opinion Bush made the decision to go to war some time in late 2002.
[IMG]http://www.geocities.com/daveclarkecb/Cartoons/BushitS.jpg[/IMG]
2005-05-17 15:47 | User Profile
[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]That pretty much WAS Saddam's response. I don't recall there being any obstructions to the weapons inspections. The bone of contention was that he hadn't given a "full and final account" of his WMD, in other words, they knew he had WMD previously but he couldn't prove that he'd destroyed them.
Subsequent coverage indicated that, to a certain extent, he was caught in his own bluff. Acting the big man with the hammer while working on finding two pieces that made one. Good stuff has been reported in the past couple of years about how his own Weapons Program Managers lied to him about progress, to keep from getting fired, or worse. Hey, doesn't that sound a bit like the US Navy's A-12 program? Just like us! Was no one investigating that angle, or were sources too hard to find, and the folks with long legs in the region, France, etc, unwilling to share inside dope? Bah.
This probably doesn't count as evidence so much as expert opinion, but during the coverage of the Iraq war on SBS television here in Australia, the network's resident military expert (a retired military officer - can't remember his name) bluntly stated that in his opinion Bush made the decision to go to war some time in late 2002.[/QUOTE] No better than anyone else's opinion, as the good general was not privy to NSC discussions from Sept 2001 to Dec 2002. Opinions and navels, eh? There have been warplans/Contingency plans for Iraq since Cease Fire in 1991.
Cheers. :beer: