they were found. Classified documents have been released that show that hundreds of missles with chemical warheads have been found in Iraq. I believe they fall under the WMD category. You guys can claim "bullshit" all you want. But this story will continue to grow. More documents are to be released. This will not go away.
We have to remember. NOBODY said Iraq didn't have them. Not France, not Germany, not Kerry, not Clinton. Did Hussein really fool EVERY singinficant intelligence agency in the world? Or did he get most of them over to Syria which would account for the hundreds of trucks that were going in and out for the weeks building up to the war?
You can still debate the wisdom of going into Iraq. I hope this will end the "Bush Lied" mantra. These documents are handing you a lot of rope. Let's see if you hang yourself with it.
Again, if Bush was "lying", then so was every other county's intelligence agency as well as every powerful Democrat. Please read the article below.
"WASHINGTON - Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday they have no evidence that Iraq produced chemical weapons after the 1991 Gulf War, despite recent reports from media outlets and Republican lawmakers."
What's even funnier is that they have US Government stamped all over them. It surprised the hell out of me that they didn't find one hell of a stash right off the bat. If you remember during the war between Iraq and Iran we gave Saddam, (our buddy at the time), all kind's of goodies. Anthrax, bomb's, missle's, you name it.
Rick Santorum out for the FOOL that he was by the senators assertion that weapons (that were last used in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's & MIGHT give one a burn if rubbed up against skin) were found...
But I guess since Santorum is trailing by 18% to his challenger, have to try something desperate...
These were the same weapons that killed thousands of Kurds. They don't count? Do you really believe they still aren't capable of killing? Wasn't Hussein supposed to have destroyed them? Didn't the UN mandate this?
Olbermann must be pretty desperate himself with his .01 rating.
He murdered the Kurd's 20 years ago, before Iraq war #1, why the desperate need to let Osama go free and send the the majority of our military force's to fight (walk around as target's) in Iraq? People are making out like bandit's with all the billion's of dollar's being spent on this criminal farce.
if he was willing to give the Iranians his fighters in Gulf 1, just to avoid destruction.
But you are somehow unable to connect the dots. This stuff is obviously very portable. So now you think it's in Syria. We know the Iranians have some, and Saddam may have given it to them.
So what do we do, go knock over every muslim country where we think there are NBC systems? Or what?
We're gonna need a lot of manpower to do that. Uncle Sam wants YOU: http://www.goarmy.com/contact/how_to_join.jsp?hmref=cs
**Fox News** actually demolished this story:
"Today, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) held a press conference and announced 'we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.' Santorum and Hoekstra are hyping a document that describes degraded, pre-1991 munitions that were already acknowledged by the White House’s Iraq Survey Group and dismissed.
"Fox News’ Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra’s claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are 'not the WMD’s for which this country went to war.'"
Fox’s Alan Colmes broke the news to Santorum.
"COLMES: Congressman, Senator, it’s Alan Colmes. Senator, the Iraq Survey Group — let me go to the Duelfer Report — says that Iraq did not have the weapons our intelligence believed were there. And Jim Angle reported this for Fox News quotes a defense official who says these were pre-1991 weapons that could not have been fired as designed because they already been degraded. And the official went on to say these are not the WMD’s this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had and not the WMD’s for which this country went to war. So the chest beating at this Republicans are doing tonight thinking this is a justification is not confirmed by the defense department.
"SANTORUM: I’d like to know who that is. The fact of the matter is, I’ll wait and see what the actual Defense Department formally says or more important what the administration formally says. "
Bush lied. It's no mantra. Nobody meditates on it. A done deal.
These were some of the weapons the UN resolution wanted to know about. The weapons he used to kill thousands. He was mandated to destroy them. He hid them instead. So since then they've gone bad. Well gosh I feel safe. He hid WMDs and defied the saintly UN. Let's ignore it! Let's not back up our own mandates. Poor Sadaam. He used WMDs to kill thousands of civillians and then he hid away those same weapons. No big deal. Let him out of jail right now. I am so surprised that Iran is pissing on the UN's forehead right now about their nuke program.
BUSH LIED, CLINTON LIED, DASCHELLE LIED, KERRY LIED, POWELL LIED, FRANCE LIED, UK LIED, GERMANY LIED, RUSSIA LIED. Sadaam told the truth?
To quote Juan Cole:
"The authors of Cobra II show that before the 2003 Iraq War, Saddam called his top generals together and let them know that he did not in fact have any WMD any more. They were allegedly shaken and disturbed."
There you have it. Saddam tells the truth occassionally-- and he keeps it a secret. Just sd Stalin did. Everybody else was just ignorant or lying, to be on the careful side.
You can't be sure that they were hidden or just abandoned. They had degraded. They were not militarily significant capability. Were they toxic waste? Yes!
The debate was not whether Iraq had toxic waste dumps, the debate was whether he had militarily capable WMD's. If toxic waste is a cause for war, let's invade Michigan.
of avoiding all the questions about this issue.
Like, why does the DoD disavow Santorum's interpretation?
And why does it matter? I'd concede that 500 rounds of 155 chemical shells might be recycled & used - given the right facilities. So could the same stuff in the hands of the Iranians, Syrians, and all the others he may have passed off to. Does that suggest (a) we need to knock over every muslim country, or (b) maybe we should find another way, like maybe TRANSPORTATION SECURITY??!!!
BTW, '55 rounds are not missile warheads. Depending on the weapon, you're looking at something around 25 mile range, max, not the hundreds of miles that a rocket may go.
Just one more instance of the usefulness of knowing what you're talking about. See all the things you can learn if you want to be all you can be, in the US Arm-ee?
Last question: why do WMDs matter, anyway? Are there no other issues? My guess is that it matters because Bush made it such a big deal in the 1st place. Make your bed, now sleep in it.
that most of the media that has covered this, are focusing on Santorum and totally ignoring the involvement of Rep. Peter Hoekstra who is actually the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and was the one to get this small amount of data declassified, just this Wednesday.
Is Santorum nuts or just stupid?
From Powell in 2001:
"but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq."
First thing you have to remember: the people not eliminating the possibility that Saddam had WMD's is not evidence that he had them. It might just be lack of interest. It's different also from claiming Iraq had those weapons: this is what Bush did to send us to war.
Evidence of trucks moving means nothing. If those were massive WMD's they'd need storage facilities. Very special storage facilities. You also don't want to transplant your nuclear or biological weapons on bad roads. A pot hole could be a catastrophe.
I haven't heard anything else about the Syria connection since, even though following up on investigating this would have to extremely easy. Depots prepared for WMD's are not extremely common in Syria.
Chemical weapons were the ones he used and the ones everyone knew he had. He had fully maintained bio labs but nobody knows how far he was with them. Nukes were never a real concern.
No special storage facilites required for chem weapons. I wasn't aware that Syria opened up their doors and invited us to check. Of course when Zarqawi's men were caught with chem weapons to use on a plot in Jordan. And Zarqawi did have strong ties to Syria, you claim it was anybody BUT Syria that could have supplied the WMDs. You floated Russia! If you haven't noticed yet, Russia has had some peoblems with terrorists as well. Funny how the labs were all kept in pristine condition. No reason for that. BTW, several Iraqi Generals have claimed the Syria connection.
I will concede that this is NOT the smoking gun I thought it was. But it does display that he violated the UN mandate and hid WMDs.
-- Modified on 6/22/2006 8:59:45 PM
Though for this late in the game, it's better to hope for a three-pointer.
Yes, chemical weapons need some storage, especially from the desert heat. If you're abandoning your chemical weapons program, BTW, and you're a third world country, probably the most practical way to do it is to bury them.
As for Syria inviting us, we could have always brought that to the UN if the evidence was any good. That certainly worked to get inspections into Iraq-- but of course we didn't listen to those inspectors, who ***said he didn't have any!!!***
Now, it seems that anybody who looked or was in a position to know anything says Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, including Saddam himself. Intelligence agencies far away from Iraq and any interest in it assumed Iraq had them. The other people you mention either lied or erred on the side of caution-- especially when the greatest authority figure in the country, the president, is saying so.
All I have been told is that somebody saw trucks going into Syria. First question: How many trucks went into Syria from Iraq every day? Second question: do trucks carry things besides WMD's?
If we could see the trucks enter Syria, why can't we get a small drone over their airspace to watch where they have been taken? Or a satellite? Or even an informer? We seemed to have a few of those before our invasion of Iraq. Though I have to admit the results were mixed.
They found old, more traditional types of weapons and that kinda shit from the Iran/Iraq war that doesn't even work anymore -- NOT the WMDs we supposedly went in there to get.
Are you guys really that desparate?
of having to pay the price for having been wrong about whether or not Saddam had WMD and or AlQueda connections or not but GWB.
"Bush Lied"
A Listener
I spent 22 years in the Air Force and retired in 1996. I wasn't in the Intelligence field, but worked in command and control and other jobs where I attended daily intelligence briefings. Based on this experience I can tell you that the public's understanding of military intelligence has been greatly influenced by Hollywood and shows a lack of understanding about how actual intelligence is gathered.
Intelligence uses "indicators" to try to predict what another country is up to. Examples include, massing of troops, dispersing command and control assets, stocking up on ammo and fuel, the movement of key leadership, increases in military communications, an increase in training intensity followed by a lull in activity, pre-positioning of materiel, etc. Preparing for war can look a lot like a military exercise. The enemy tries to disguise these indicators to throw us off track and our Intelligence analysts have to make an educated conclusion and pass it one to the decision makers.
Real intelligence is a best estimate based on what we can see and hear. Satellites can't look into a truck or a building and see the contents. Iraq is about twice the size of the state of Idaho and the Iraqis and they went to a lot of trouble to disguise their intentions. The satellites placed in orbit can't see all of the country. They only see about a square mile at a time, so something or someone has to provide us with information needed to focus our attention on a specific area. The Iraqis knew this, so they tried to mislead us be "spoofing". That is, they attempted to mislead us by slight of hand. Sending trucks to empty buildings, massing troops near Iran, creating diversions while moving materiel in unmarked vehicles, using plywood to construct replicas of SCUDs, bunkers, and tanks, etc.
Human Intelligence can't be trusted either. The Iraqis who were providing us with information weren't doing it to help the US. They wanted Sadaam taken out and knew the US was their best hope for doing that. They were intentionally feeding us false information and half truths in attempt to further their own goals.
My personal view is that anyone who had access to the information available to the public would have concluded that Sadaam had stocks of nerve gas and the means to deliver them to neighboring countries. We know that he had used nerve gas on the Kurds and Iranians. He had invested in long range SCUD missiles (Al Hussein) and specially designed artillery shells to deliver nerve gas, and that his Republican Guard units were equipped with chemical warfare equipment and regularly trained to use it. We had human intelligence saying that Iraq was actively engaged in developing offensive chemical weapons. If I remember correctly, Sadaam had also purchased chemical decontamination equipment. He refused to allow UN inspection teams to freely inspect the facilities where we suspected the chemical weapons were stored and manufactured. I believe that Sadaam had a moderate amount of chemical weapons and was working on developing biological weapons. I agree with your assessment that the evidence was moved to Syria or buried in the desert (like the squadron of fighter planes that we found after the war.)
John Kerry was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and would have had the same access to intelligence that the President had and he concluded the same thing and publicly supported the military actions against Iraq before the war. Hillary Clinton also gave speeches publicly supporting military action against Iraq. Now they are using their own version of smoke and mirrors and propaganda to misdirect the public about their own leadership shortcomings.
Mike Bynack, SMSgt, USAF (Ret)
Panama City, FL
are you seriously trying to reargue the BS that the Chimp in Chief used to get us into this war? This is why it is pointless arguing with retards.
The President had us go into Iraq for the same reason that we should have gone into N Korea under Clinton but signed a treaty with them instead that firced them to stop building nukes just long enough to sign it ...laugh at us . and then go back to work making nukes ...some people are just too primitive to understand anything but brute force diplomacy ..now thanks to our impeached degraded humiliated, dissbarred adulteous ex president and his side kick Jimmy Carter ...the worst president who has ever lived we are stuck trying to clean up the mess they made by negotiating across a table with the north Koreans instead of at the end of a gun. We have alot of 20+ year old WMD's (gasses etc) stored in the ground in oregon that they are slowly trying to dispose of and I guarantee you they would do more than burn your flesh if rubbed onto your skin... every leader and want to be leader in every civilized countryt in the world knew Saddam had WMD ...even that bimbo Hillary said it 50 times when she wasn't muttering racial slurs or acting like white trash ...thats why democrats cant get elected anymore ...the internet has lossened their iron =grip on the media and now people realize tjhat the when commies like crokite and dan rather sAid "and thats the way it is" it really meant "thats the way it isn't!" thank god cor the internet in finally getting to the truth of things
WMDs are only as big a deal as the RNC makes them.
There's plenty of other reasons to go in, or not go in.
This particular thing is only as big an issue as Shrub wanted it to be.
The larger questions are (1) was it a smart move? ie, to go into Iraq instead of approaching the problem another way? or (2)was Bush simply so determined to do this, that he just ran roughshod over the American people to do as he damn well pleased, going off on an expedition that could only be justified if you were a major shareholder in war contractors?
BTW, there are one hell of a lot of retired military and other people who do in fact know at least part of what they are doing. The US executive bureaucracy has a massive reservoir of useful information. But it still has to have somebody at the top with good judgment and perspective. Dubya sure ain't no Eisenhower.
"Bush lied us into the war" is "revisiting" this bullshit and frankly weakens our position when in fact there are otherwise reasonable, honorable people who disaGREE WITH THAT ASSESMENT
If he had WMD's, he had them for more than a decade. He didn't use them even against the Kuwaitis when invaded.
There was no known association between Hussein and al-Qaeda. Saddam was a secular Arab. It's part of the reason why there was a major war against Iran. The two represented two extremely opposite visions of the middle east, comparable to the divide between the Soviet Union and the West.
So, the question becomes, why did the WMD's in Iraq suddenly become a priority? Why did we suddenly hear things like Iraq was ready to launch them? It hadn't happened for years of sanctions. Why did it become such a danger?
Bush used 911 to move against Iraq. You can't see an association with Iraq and al-Qaeda, but you can easily see an association between Bush and the NeoCons at the new American Century, and the fact that they had advocated changing the Middle East with the first step the invasion of Iraq.
I can see motive in the fact that Saddam would destroy his chemical weapons-- because in Desert Storm, they proved ineffectual against Israel, and his prior use of them caused the world to unite against him. Besides with the sanctions, he was too poor to maintain them. I could see why he never admitted he had buried them: because with Iraq so weakened after Desert Storm, he still had a hostile Iran next door. He needed to leave that ambiguous. With his country so weakened all he had for defense was some bluffing.
I disagree with most of the assessments of this author. John Kerry does not have the access people think.
-- Modified on 6/23/2006 11:58:53 PM
let me be clear about something right off the bat. I am "at best", a reluctant supporter of us being in Iraq ONLY TO THE EXTENT that I think by doing so will ultimately lead to a more satisfactory conclusion. I think elements of the insurgency is fueled in part by the lack of cohension on our part. Therefore, finding out the facts about that which divides us is important to me.
The arguemnt being made about the WMD was not sio much that SH was going to use them but rather these were materials he would supply to smaller groups who has no central place of origin. IOW, we all knew where Saddam lived.
My big problem is this, we have young men in, as Sgt Hulka calls it, a killing zone. Even though one of the big reasons for sending them there has proven to be wrong thus far, that element is at this point, to some extent moot. (We can impeach the shit out of GWB later if it's deemeed necessary. I don't give a rats ass, he's not "my guy". but I don't believe it is making our boys safer to criticize him BEYOND that which is supported by facts.
"""""""because with Iraq so weakened after Desert Storm, he still had a hostile Iran next door. He needed to leave that ambiguous. With his country so weakened all he had for defense was some bluffing.""""""""""
Sadly, this is a very accuarate summation. Sad because we really did'nt know this until we went in. ANd now it's too late unless, as you believe, it was the PNAC'ers script bush was following all along. Indeed, it is fact of the PNAC roadmap that makes me highly skeptical of this president
I remember how contentious things were under Nixon and then under Carter. We lost Vietnam. A tactical loss. It looked devastating at the time. However, we won the world conflict. Strategically, we won. In hindsight, the quicker we got out of Vietnam, the better it would have been for us and for the world both.
The fact is, to win, we didn't need to make people disappear or to deprive people of rights, do broad survelience, or set up places like Guantanemo. It's absurd how many of our values this Administration has betrayed. Terrorists do not represent a threat at all approaching the Soviet Union and Communist China at the height of the Cold War. With the terrorist, we might lose a city. In the days of MAD, we might have lost every city.
Plus, BK, this enemy is far more divided and factional than the Communists were. By far, more divided than we are. Look at the factionalization in Iraq. That's a microcosm of the factions among Islamic fundamentalists.
So, I think you have little to fear.
we still won the cold war. And the same will be true in our present situation. The Republicans will again have to battle the Dems as well as the "other" enemy.
I'm glad we're all on the same page with this one.
ie firmly against any intelligent or honest action.