RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events "It's not about oil or Iraq..."

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U.S. TO HUSSEIN: WMD A-OK
New documents detail how Rumsfeld and Reagan let Iraq know it was just
fine to keep using chemical weapons against Iran, Kurds

December 30, 2003 -- Sometimes democracy works. Though the wheels of
accountability often grind slowly, they also can grind fine, if
lubricated by the hard work of free-thinking citizens. The latest example: the
release of official documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information
Act, that detail how the U.S. government under presidents Ronald Reagan
and George H.W. Bush nurtured and supported Saddam Hussein despite his
repeated use of chemical weapons.

The work of the National Security Archive, a dogged organization
fighting for government transparency, has cast light on the trove of
documents that depict in damning detail how the United States, working with
U.S. corporations including Bechtel, cynically and secretly allied itself
with Hussein's dictatorship. The evidence undermines the unctuous moral
superiority with which the current American president, media and public
now judge Hussein, a monster the U.S. actively helped create.

The documents make it clear that were the trial of Hussein to be held
by an impartial world court, it would prove an embarrassing two-edged
sword for the White House, calling into question the motives of U.S.
foreign policy. If there were a complete investigation into those who aided
and abetted Hussein's crimes against humanity, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and former Secretary of State George Shultz would probably
end up as material witnesses.

It was Rumsfeld and Shultz who told Hussein and his emissaries that
U.S. statements generally condemning the use of chemical weapons would not
interfere with relations between secular Iraq and the Reagan
administration, which took Iraq off the terrorist-nations list and embraced
Hussein as a bulwark against fundamentalist Iran. Ironically, the U.S
supported Iraq when it possessed and used weapons of mass destruction and
invaded it when it didn't.

It was 20 years ago when Shultz dropped in on a State Department
meeting between his top aide and a high-ranking Hussein emissary. Back then
the Iraqis, who were fighting a war with Iran, were our new best friends
in the Mideast. Shultz wanted to make it crystal clear that U.S.
criticism of the use of chemical weapons was just pablum for public
consumption, meant as a restatement of a "long-standing policy, and not as a
pro-Iranian/anti-Iraqi gesture," as State's Lawrence S. Eagleburger told
Hussein's emissary. "Our desire and our actions to prevent an Iranian
victory and to continue the progress of our bilateral relations remain
undiminished," Eagleburger continued, according to the then highly
classified transcript of the meeting.

The Shultz/Eagleburger meeting took place between two crucial visits by
Rumsfeld, acting as a Reagan emissary, to Hussein to offer
unconditional support for the Iraqi leader in his war with Iran. In the first
meeting, in December 1983, Rumsfeld told Hussein that the United States
would assist in building an oil pipeline from Iraq to Aqaba, Jordan. He
made no mention of chemical weapons, even though U.S. intelligence only
months earlier had confirmed that Iraq was using such illegal weapons
almost daily against Iranians and Kurds.

That administration's eye was not on the carnage from chemical weapons
but rather the profit to be obtained from the flow of oil. In a later
meeting with an Iraqi representative, as recorded in the minutes,
"Eagleburger explained that because of the participation of Bechtel in the
Aqaba pipeline, the Secretary of State [Shultz] is keeping completely
isolated from the issue. Iraq should understand that this does not imply a
lack of high-level [U.S. government] interest." (Shultz had been chief
executive of Bechtel before joining the Reagan administration and is
currently a director of the company, which is signing contracts for work
in Iraq as fast as U.S. taxes can be allocated.)

Minutes of that meeting and others in which the United States ignored
Hussein's use of banned weapons while extending support to the dictator
mock the moral high ground assumed by George W. Bush in defense of his
invasion. If, as Bush II says, Hussein acted as a "Hitler" while
"gassing his own people," during the 1980s, we were fully aware and
implicitly approving, via economic and military aid, of his most nefarious
deeds.

Hussein's crimes were committed on our watch, when he was a U.S. ally,
and we knowingly looked the other way. But don't take my word for it;
check out http://www.nsarchive.org .

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Considering right now i'm getting ready to go to work to do my daily standing up to hardened gangbangers in the heart of so.central L.A. as I do every-single-day, I find you calling me gutless quite amusing.

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Considering right now i'm getting ready to go to work to do my daily standing up to hardened gangbangers in the heart of so.central L.A. as I do every-single-day, I find you calling me gutless quite amusing.

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Unless you are a police officer, I'm not particularly impressed with your courage. I doubt, for example, the "gang bangers" consider the guy who brings them their welfare checks to be "standing up" to them.

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where is the racial comment?

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where is the racial comment?

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When you find out, please let me know. I can't figure it out either. Unless whomod is simply playing the old "I can't win this one so I'd better call the conservative a racist" card.

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you really are a miserable peice of **t

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Bush Sought ‘Way’ To Invade Iraq?

(watch the videos)

Jan. 11, 2004

(CBS) A year ago, Paul O'Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts.

Now, O'Neill - who is known for speaking his mind - talks for the first time about his two years inside the Bush administration. His story is the centerpiece of a new book being published this week about the way the Bush White House is run.

Entitled "The Price of Loyalty," the book by a former Wall Street Journal reporter draws on interviews with high-level officials who gave the author their personal accounts of meetings with the president, their notes and documents.

But the main source of the book was Paul O'Neill. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.
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Paul O'Neill says he is going public because he thinks the Bush Administration has been too secretive about how decisions have been made.

Will this be seen as a “kiss-and-tell" book?

“I've come to believe that people will say damn near anything, so I'm sure somebody will say all of that and more,” says O’Neill, who was George Bush's top economic policy official.

In the book, O’Neill says that the president did not make decisions in a methodical way: there was no free-flow of ideas or open debate.

At cabinet meetings, he says the president was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection," forcing top officials to act "on little more than hunches about what the president might think."

This is what O'Neill says happened at his first hour-long, one-on-one meeting with Mr. Bush: “I went in with a long list of things to talk about, and I thought to engage on and as the book says, I was surprised that it turned out me talking, and the president just listening … As I recall, it was mostly a monologue.”

He also says that President Bush was disengaged, at least on domestic issues, and that disturbed him. And he says that wasn't his experience when he worked as a top official under Presidents Nixon and Ford, or the way he ran things when he was chairman of Alcoa.

O'Neill readily agreed to tell his story to the book's author Ron Suskind – and he adds that he's taking no money for his part in the book.

Suskind says he interviewed hundreds of people for the book – including several cabinet members.

O'Neill is the only one who spoke on the record, but Suskind says that someone high up in the administration – Donald Rumsfeld - warned O’Neill not to do this book.

Was it a warning, or a threat?

“I don't think so. I think it was the White House concerned,” says Suskind. “Understandably, because O'Neill has spent extraordinary amounts of time with the president. They said, ‘This could really be the one moment where things are revealed.’"
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Not only did O'Neill give Suskind his time, he gave him 19,000 internal documents.

“Everything's there: Memoranda to the President, handwritten "thank you" notes, 100-page documents. Stuff that's sensitive,” says Suskind, adding that in some cases, it included transcripts of private, high-level National Security Council meetings. “You don’t get higher than that.”

And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.

"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’" says O’Neill. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.”

And that came up at this first meeting, says O’Neill, who adds that the discussion of Iraq continued at the next National Security Council meeting two days later.

He got briefing materials under this cover sheet. “There are memos. One of them marked, secret, says, ‘Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,’" adds Suskind, who says that they discussed an occupation of Iraq in January and February of 2001.
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Based on his interviews with O'Neill and several other officials at the meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq's oil wealth.

He obtained one Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001, and entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts," which includes a map of potential areas for exploration.

“It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions,” says Suskind. “On oil in Iraq.”

During the campaign, candidate Bush had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."

“The thing that's most surprising, I think, is how emphatically, from the very first, the administration had said ‘X’ during the campaign, but from the first day was often doing ‘Y,’” says Suskind. “Not just saying ‘Y,’ but actively moving toward the opposite of what they had said during the election.”

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.
But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, Suskind writes that O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

“Cheney, at this moment, shows his hand,” says Suskind. “He says, ‘You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.’ … O'Neill is speechless.”

”It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society,” says O’Neill. “And I thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was a lot more important than a tax reduction.”

Did he think it was irresponsible? “Well, it's for sure not what I would have done,” says O’Neill.

The former treasury secretary accuses Vice President Dick Cheney of not being an honest broker, but, with a handful of others, part of "a praetorian guard that encircled the president" to block out contrary views. "This is the way Dick likes it," says O’Neill.
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Meanwhile, the White House was losing patience with O'Neill. He was becoming known for a series of off-the-cuff remarks his critics called gaffes. One of them sent the dollar into a nosedive and required major damage control.

Twice during stock market meltdowns, O'Neill was not available to the president: He was out of the country - one time on a trip to Africa with the Irish rock star Bono.

“Africa made an enormous splash. It was like a road show,” says Suskind. “He comes back and the president says to him at a meeting, ‘You know, you're getting quite a cult following.’ And it clearly was not a joke. And it was not said in jest.”

Suskind writes that the relationship grew tenser and that the president even took a jab at O'Neill in public, at an economic forum in Texas.

The two men were never close. And O'Neill was not amused when Mr. Bush began calling him "The Big O." He thought the president's habit of giving people nicknames was a form of bullying. Everything came to a head for O'Neill at a November 2002 meeting at the White House of the economic team.

“It's a huge meeting. You got Dick Cheney from the, you know, secure location on the video. The President is there,” says Suskind, who was given a nearly verbatim transcript by someone who attended the meeting.

He says everyone expected Mr. Bush to rubber stamp the plan under discussion: a big new tax cut. But, according to Suskind, the president was perhaps having second thoughts about cutting taxes again, and was uncharacteristically engaged.

“He asks, ‘Haven't we already given money to rich people? This second tax cut's gonna do it again,’” says Suskind.

“He says, ‘Didn’t we already, why are we doing it again?’ Now, his advisers, they say, ‘Well Mr. President, the upper class, they're the entrepreneurs. That's the standard response.’ And the president kind of goes, ‘OK.’ That's their response. And then, he comes back to it again. ‘Well, shouldn't we be giving money to the middle, won't people be able to say, ‘You did it once, and then you did it twice, and what was it good for?’"

But according to the transcript, White House political advisor Karl Rove jumped in.

“Karl Rove is saying to the president, a kind of mantra. ‘Stick to principle. Stick to principle.’ He says it over and over again,” says Suskind. “Don’t waver.”

In the end, the president didn't. And nine days after that meeting in which O'Neill made it clear he could not publicly support another tax cut, the vice president called and asked him to resign.

With the deficit now climbing towards $400 billion, O'Neill maintains he was in the right.

But look at the economy today.

“Yes, well, in the last quarter the growth rate was 8.2 percent. It was terrific,” says O’Neill. “I think the tax cut made a difference. But without the tax cut, we would have had 6 percent real growth, and the prospect of dealing with transformation of Social Security and fundamentally fixing the tax system. And to me, those were compelling competitors for, against more tax cuts.”
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While in the book O'Neill comes off as constantly appalled at Mr. Bush, he was surprised when Stahl told him she found his portrait of the president unflattering.

“Hmmm, you really think so,” asks O’Neill, who says he isn’t joking. “Well, I’ll be darned.”

“You're giving me the impression that you're just going to be stunned if they attack you for this book,” says Stahl to O’Neill. “And they're going to say, I predict, you know, it's sour grapes. He's getting back because he was fired.”
“I will be really disappointed if they react that way because I think they'll be hard put to,” says O’Neill.

Is he prepared for it?

“Well, I don't think I need to be because I can't imagine that I'm going to be attacked for telling the truth,” says O’Neill. “Why would I be attacked for telling the truth?”

White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked about the book on Friday and said "The president is someone that leads and acts decisively on our biggest priorities and that is exactly what he'll continue to do."

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Already payback is being orchestrated.

Treasury Seeks Probe Into O'Neill Interview

I'm just glad O'Neil doesn't have a wife who's an undercover CIA agent. OY!


So far, the intimidation tactic worked. O'Neil is retracting and backpedaling almost as soon as the news that he was being probed got out.

http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusgen/ap01-12-153119.asp?t=apnew&vts=11320040558#body

The guy looked completely naive in beleiving that if he only told the truth, he'd be safe. Guess he wised up. TRUTH is the enemy these days.

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[Wesley] Clark, a retired general, said the administration's prompt probe into O'Neill was in striking contrast to the length of time it took to begin investigating the leak that identified Valerie Plame.

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January 12, 2004


THE WORLD
War College Study Calls Iraq a 'Detour'

Institute's report warns anti-terror campaign may launch 'open-ended and gratuitous conflict.'

By Chuck Neubauer and Ken Silverstein, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — A report published by the Army War College criticizes the Bush administration's global war on terrorism as "unfocused" and contends that the war in Iraq is "unnecessary" and a "detour" that has diverted attention and resources from the threat posed by Al Qaeda.

The report warns that the administration's global war on terrorism may have set the United States "on a course of open-ended and gratuitous conflict with states and non-state entities that pose no serious threat to the United States."

The report by Jeffrey Record, a visiting research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, calls for downsizing the war on terrorism and focusing instead on the threat from Al Qaeda, the terror network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as well as other sites around the world.

"The global war on terrorism as presently defined and conducted is strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military and other resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security," Record wrote, concluding his 56-page monograph. "The United States may be able to defeat, even destroy, Al Qaeda, but it cannot rid the world of terrorism, much less evil."

Record calls the war in Iraq "an unnecessary preventative war" that has "diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable Al Qaeda." The Iraq war was a "detour" from the war on terrorism, he said.

The Army War College, located in Carlisle, Pa., trains military and civilian officials in the theory and application of military strategy using land-based forces. The report contains a disclaimer stating that it does not necessarily represent the views of the Army, the Pentagon or the U.S. government.

In the foreword to the report, found on the Internet at http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/2003/bounding/bounding.pdf ,

Douglas C. Lovelace Jr., the institute's director, said the monograph was offered "as a contribution to the national security debate over the aims and course of the war on terrorism."

Record, a former staff member for the Senate Armed Services Committee, has written six books on military issues. He also teaches at the Air Force's Air War College in Montgomery, Ala.

Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based research organization that focuses on military affairs, said: "There's no question that Iraq has diverted U.S. attention from the war on terrorism. However, [the U.S.] invaded Iraq to resolve a potentially more serious threat that American intelligence indicated was quite urgent — that being the threat of weapons of mass destruction…. All intelligence estimates pointed to an urgent threat."

Daniel Benjamin, a member of the National Security Council staff in the late 1990s, said, "The criticism does not seem out of line with many of the conversations I have had with officers in every branch of the military."

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Which of course brings us back to the alleged WMD's....

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The former treasury secretary accuses Vice President Dick Cheney of not being an honest broker, but, with a handful of others, part of "a praetorian guard that encircled the president" to block out contrary views. "This is the way Dick likes it," says O’Neill.

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"I glance at the headlines, just to get kind of a flavor," he told Brit Hume of Fox News last month. But, "I rarely read the stories" because "a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news." Instead, "I get briefed by [White House Chief of Staff] Andy Card and Condi [Rice, the national security adviser] in the morning."

The president concluded, "The best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Bush conceded that Rice and Card "probably read the news themselves." - George W. Bush

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[O'Neil] says the president was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection,"

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I’ve been increasingly concerned since 9/11. The strategy was going the wrong way. It was a sort of “bait and switch” tactic. We had Osama bin Laden; he wasn’t enough of an enemy, I guess, wasn’t clear – wanted to get something more substantial. Let’s go back to those old guys that we didn’t like the last time, finish off Saddam Hussein." - Gen. Wesley Clark

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"People are trying to make a case that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration," O'Neill said. "Actually, there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be regime change in Iraq."

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"People are trying to make a case that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration," O'Neill said. "Actually, there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be regime change in Iraq."

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Bush1:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible ... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ... there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

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"Don't Attack Saddam: Given Saddam's aggressive regional ambitions, as well as his ruthlessness and unpredictability, it may at some point be wise to remove him from power. Whether and when that point should come ought to depend on overall U.S. national security priorities. Our pre-eminent security priority -- underscored repeatedly by the president -- is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken."

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Yet contrary to the advice of his own father and a man who had served 29 years in the military, then served two presidents as a National Security Advisor, Bush2 knew better than both of them that we HAD to invade Iraq... PNAC told him so!

Funny that Clinton would listen closely to Bush1 and his best military expert and Bush2 wouldn't.

In fact the neo-cons accused General Scowcroft of being a terrorist sympathizer and a "Saddam-lover" when he spoke up against going to war!

Now we come to Paul O'Neill... Paul O'Neill was Chairman and CEO of Alcoa Aluminum, and held his Alcoa stock months beyond what was permissible under federal ethics laws, but Bush and Company kept that quiet because Alcoa had been Bush's third largest contributor... (Alcoa had also received special concessions from Bush as a major polluter in Texas)

O'Neill was opposed to Bush's tax cuts for the rich, opposed to Bush's "Economic Incentives" program once referring to it as "show business", and was opposed to Bush's outrageous spending in Afghanistan and Iraq. After too many public statements that embarrassed Bush, Bush asked for his resignation, implying publicly (through spokespeople of course) that O'Neill was responsible for setbacks in the economy.

O'Neill is generally believed to be a scrupulously honest man, and way too outspoken and honest to be in Bush's cabinet! Obviously Bush is not a man that takes kindly to good advice!

Strangest of all, is that the Bushies hated Clinton for lying about his personal life, and love Bush whose lies actually affect our nation.

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The letter said Iraq had these awful weapons, that Iraq needed to be invaded, and Iraq might attack us at any time! Funny, these are the same people that convinced Bush to send our troops in with inadequate planning and equipment.

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It's ridiculous that the neo-cons will first say that Clinton was a liar and a womanizer and thus unfit for office... yet they will turn around and say "Clinton said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction too!"

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whomod said:
It's obvious where Clinton was getting his mis-information about Iraq... just two weeks before Clinton verbally attacked Iraq, he had been given a long letter signed by the following PNAC "experts" on Iraq: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz,

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Beardguy57 said:
" As successful as our war in Vietnam??? "


Um, we didn't win that one.....

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EVEN IF Bush honestly thought there were WMDs, he should have waited. He was a hurry to get the troops in there before the summer and didn't want to wait.[/qoute]

There was no imminent threat.

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whomod said:
ON TOP OF ALL THAT, there is the fact that Bush and especially his cabinet was planning this attack way before he started publicly discussing it and mentioning WMDs.

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Presidents and their cabinets of both political parties plan contingencies and attacks, even if they never actually use them, all the time. It is part of being prepared.

For example, do you really think Roosevelt's cabinet didn't plan potential invasions of Germany prior to our entry in WWII? Or that every President thereafter up to and including Reagan didn't plan possible invasions of Cuba, China, the USSR and our other cold war enemies?

Furthermore, as noted ad nauseaum, until the current election cycle, pretty much every national official of both political parties considered Saddam a threat. As such, it made perfect since to start planning an invasion if, for no other reason, just in case.

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You know if the intelligence community had been correct and there was indeed WMD's and we waited and a terrorist organization had got ahold of them, and used thenm you 2 would have complained Bush did nothing.

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If we were wrong about WMD's in Iraq at worst we got rid of a brutal dictator. But of course that doesnt matter you guys have bashing to do, sad really.

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britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
You know if the intelligence community had been correct and there was indeed WMD's and we waited and a terrorist organization had got ahold of them, and used thenm you 2 would have complained Bush did nothing. That's just pathetic. you are clearly partisan. In whomods post he admits that Clinton believed they had them then twists the truth and says Blix and the UN said they didnt. This is not a fact. At the time Blix said they could not prove they had them, not that they didnt. but that they needed more time to search. Thids is the truth, not skewed towards one party or the other, You guys have pretty much killed any chance of making a persuasive argument by your blind blanket hatred of one person. Facts are facts, Clinton, and Bush had access to the same intelligence. They both believed he possed WMD's, in Clintons tenure there was no 9-11 so the case could be made wait and see. After 9-11, reacting instead of being proactive in most Americans eyes is not a viable option. If we were wrong about WMD's in Iraq at worst we got rid of a brutal dictator. But of course that doesnt matter you guys have bashing to do, sad really.

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the G-man said:
pretty much every national official of both political parties considered Saddam a threat.

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JQ said:
I would prefer if we had just kept inspectors there. Saddam wouldn't develop anything big while they were there.

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JQ said:
I would prefer if we had just kept inspectors there. Saddam wouldn't develop anything big while they were there. Iraq had no more of a connection to terrorism than any other nation. There's no evidence to suggest he had any real connection to terrorism, let alone any plans to supply terrorists with anything. The only plausible reason why Saddam Hussein would ever want to attack us would be because of the sanctions we demanded to keep on the country.

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If we were wrong about WMD's in Iraq at worst we got rid of a brutal dictator. But of course that doesnt matter you guys have bashing to do, sad really.

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The reasons congress appoved of an attack don't matter? No WMD? No imminent threat? No real threat at all? No real connection to terrorists that attacked us? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, but he's a bad guy. Sure, he was a bad guy, but is that any reason to invade a nation? That reason wasn't given as a reason Iraq posed an imminent threat to us. We didn't care in the 80's when Saddam was actually committing these deeds. The "brutal dictator" thing is an excuse, not a justification.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Mortar shells found in Iraq and believed to be suspicious in fact contained no chemical agents, the Danish army said after a week of tests.

The 36 shells, found 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the city of Qurnah in southern Iraq on January 9, had initially been thought by Danish and British troops to contain a blister agent.

But further tests carried out in southern Iraq and the United States were negative, the Danish army said in a statement on Sunday, The Associated Press reported.

It was unclear why the initial field tests were wrong, the Danish army said from its headquarters in Karup, 265 km northwest of Copenhagen.

"The Danish Army Operational Command will now investigate what could be the cause to this," the statement said. It added that the testing kits would be sent to Denmark for examination.

U.S. Army officials had said the 120 mm shells, which are at least 10 years old, was surplus from the Iran-Iraq war in the mid-1980s. Blister agents are used in chemical weapons.

Several hundred Danish soldiers are working with a British-led multinational force responsible for security in southern Iraq.

Both the U.S. and British governments cited the threat of illicit weapons of mass destruction as a main reason for launching the Iraq war. However, no such weapons have been found so far.

The U.S. pulled 400 weapons-disposal experts from Iraq this month in what The New York Times called "a sign that [the] administration might have lowered its sights." The move raised suspicions that weapons are unlikely to be found.

The White House played down the move, saying the group focused on hunting weapons was remaining in Iraq.

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britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
I think its already been established the intelligence prolly was mistaken. I think that your glee each time continues to prove the point I was making.

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A Dishonest War

By Edward M. Kennedy
Sunday, January 18, 2004; Page B07

Of the many issues competing for attention in this new and defining year, one is of a unique order of magnitude: President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. The facts demonstrate how dishonest that decision was. As former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill recently confirmed, the debate over military action began as soon as President Bush took office. Some felt Saddam Hussein could be contained without war. A month after the inauguration, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said: "We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." The next day, he said tellingly that Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction."



The events of Sept. 11, 2001, gave advocates of war the opening they needed. They tried immediately to tie Hussein to al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld created an Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon to analyze the intelligence for war and bypass the traditional screening process. Vice President Cheney relied on intelligence from Iraqi exiles and put pressure on intelligence agencies to produce the desired result.

The war in Afghanistan began in October with overwhelming support in Congress and the country. But the focus on Iraq continued behind the scenes, and President Bush went along. In the Rose Garden on Nov. 26, he said: "Afghanistan is still just the beginning."

Three days later, Cheney publicly began to send signals about attacking Iraq. On Nov. 29 he said: "I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that this guy [Hussein] is clearly . . . a significant potential problem for the region, for the United States, for everybody with interests in the area." On Dec. 12 he raised the temperature: "If I were Saddam Hussein, I'd be thinking very carefully about the future, and I'd be looking very closely to see what happened to the Taliban in Afghanistan."

Next, Karl Rove, in a rare public stumble, made his own role clear, telling the Republican National Committee on Jan. 19, 2002, that the war on terrorism could be used politically. Republicans could "go to the country on this issue," he said.

Ten days later, in his State of the Union address, President Bush invoked the "axis of evil" -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- and we lost our clear focus on al Qaeda. The address contained 12 paragraphs on Afghanistan and 29 on the war on terrorism, but only one fleeting mention of al Qaeda. It said nothing about the Taliban or Osama bin Laden.

In the following months, although bin Laden was still at large, the drumbeat on Iraq gradually drowned out those who felt Hussein was no imminent threat. On Sept. 12 the president told the United Nations: "Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents and has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon." He said Iraq could build a nuclear weapon "within a year" if Hussein obtained such material.

War on Iraq was clearly coming, but why make this statement in September? As White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." The 2002 election campaigns were then entering the home stretch. Election politics prevailed over foreign policy and national security. The administration insisted on a vote in Congress to authorize the war before Congress adjourned for the elections. Why? Because the debate would distract attention from the troubled economy and the failed effort to capture bin Laden. The shift in focus to Iraq could help Republicans and divide Democrats.

The tactic worked. Republicans voted almost unanimously for war and kept control of the House in the elections. Democrats were deeply divided and lost their majority in the Senate. The White House could use its control of Congress to get its way on key domestic priorities.

The final step in the march to war was a feint to the United Nations. But Cheney, Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz had convinced the president that war would be a cakewalk, with or without the United Nations, and that our forces would be welcomed as liberators. In March the war began.

Hussein's brutal regime was not an adequate justification for war, and the administration did not seriously try to make it one until long after the war began and all the false justifications began to fall apart. There was no imminent threat. Hussein had no nuclear weapons, no arsenals of chemical or biological weapons, no connection to Sept. 11 and no plausible link to al Qaeda. We never should have gone to war for ideological reasons driven by politics and based on manipulated intelligence.

Vast resources have been spent on the war that should have been spent on priorities at home. Our forces are stretched thin. Precious lives have been lost. The war has made America more hated in the world and made the war on terrorism harder to win. As Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in announcing the latest higher alert: "Al Qaeda's continued desire to carry out attacks against our homeland is perhaps greater now than at any point since September 11th."

The most fundamental decision a president ever makes is the decision to go to war. President Bush violated the trust that must exist between government and the people. If Congress and the American people had known the truth, America would never have gone to war in Iraq. No president who does that to our country deserves to be reelected.

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Rumsfeld Retreats, Disclaims Earlier Rhetoric

By Eric Rosenberg
Hearst Newspapers | Ocala Star Banner

Sunday 09 November 2003

Rumsfeld denies he ever made several pre-war statements.
In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. forces would be welcomed by the Iraqi citizenry and that Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

Now, after both statements have been shown to be either incorrect or vastly exaggerated, Rumsfeld - with the same trademark confidence that he exuded before the war - is denying that he ever made such assertions.

In recent testy exchanges with reporters, Rumsfeld interrupted the questioners and attacked the premise of the questions if they dealt with his pre-war comments about weapons of mass destruction and Americans-as-liberators.

For example, on Feb. 20, a month before the invasion, Rumsfeld fielded a question about whether Americans would be greeted as liberators if they invaded Iraq.

"Do you expect the invasion, if it comes, to be welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq?" Jim Lehrer asked the defense secretary on PBS' "The News Hour."

"There is no question but that they would be welcomed," Rumsfeld replied, referring to American forces. "Go back to Afghanistan, the people were in the streets playing music, cheering, flying kites, and doing all the things that the Taliban and the al-Qaeda would not let them do."

The Americans-as-liberators theme was repeated by other senior administration officials in the weeks preceding the war, including Rumsfeld's No. 2 - Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - and Vice President Cheney.

But on Sept. 25, - a particularly bloody day in which one U.S. soldier was killed in an ambush, eight Iraqi civilians died in a mortar strike and a member of the U.S-appointed governing council died after an assassination attempt five days earlier - Rumsfeld was asked about the surging resistance.

"Before the war in Iraq, you stated the case very eloquently and you said . . . they would welcome us with open arms," Sinclair Broadcasting anchor Morris Jones said to Rumsfeld as the prelude to a question.

The defense chief quickly cut him off.
"Never said that," he said. "Never did. You may remember it well, but you're thinking of somebody else. You can't find, anywhere, me saying anything like either of those two things you just said I said."

When testifying about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the House Armed Services Committee Sept. 18, 2002, Rumsfeld said Saddam "has amassed large clandestine stocks of biological weapons." including anthrax and botulism toxin and possibly smallpox. His regime has amassed large clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX and sarin and mustard gas."

Saddam
Saddam "has at this moment stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons," he later added, repeating the charges the next day before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He repeated that theme in the weeks preceding the war.

Last month, after U.S. weapons hunters reported to the administration and Congress that they have yet to find a single weapon of mass destruction in Iraq, Rumsfeld was asked about his earlier statements.

A reporter at a Pentagon news conference asked: "In retrospect, were you a little too far-leaning in your statement that Iraq categorically had caches of weapons, of chemical and biological weapons, given what's been found to date? You painted a picture of extensive stocks" of Iraqi mass-killing weapons.

"Wait," Rumsfeld interjected. "You go back and give me something that talks about extensive stocks. The U.N. reported extensive stocks. That is where that came from. I said what I believed to be the case, and I don't - I'd be surprised if you found the word 'extensive."'

With the weapons hunt in its eighth month, Rumsfeld also has backtracked on his earlier assertions that American troops knew where the forbidden weapons were hidden.

On March 30, 11 days into the war, Rumsfeld said in an ABC News interview when asked about WMDs: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

In comments Sept. 10 before the National Press Club, Rumsfeld conceded that he may have overreached. "I said, 'We know they're in that area," Rumsfeld said. "I should have said, 'I believe we're in that area. Our intelligence tells us they're in that area,' and that was our best judgment."

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
--Donald Rumsfeld
On March 30, on alleged weapons of mass distruction in Iraq.
"I should have said, 'I believe they're in that area.' "

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whomod said:
My point again is that the humanitarian aspect was made AFTER the justification to go to war fell apart. Yes, Sadaam was a bad man and it's good that he's gone. Still, that doesn't excuse the fact that Congress and The American public was misled. Now if Bush had gone before the American public and made the case for war on Iraq for all the reasons you give, that would be one thing. That didn't happen. I just find it incredible that you think it's perfectly excusable for the President of the US and his cabinet to deceive regardless if the ends turn out positively or not. IMO that is inexcusable.

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President Bush says the "case is closed" with regards to those "sixteen words" in his State of the Union speech. What about these 71 from the same speech?

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas."

To date, not a single UAV has been found, or drop of CBWs, or any munitions capable of delivering said weapons.
Is the CIA responsible for those words as well?

What about these 26, also from the same speech?

"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida."

To date, not a shred of evidence connecting Hussein with Al Qaida or any other known terrorist organizations (besides certain Palestinian groups who represent no direct threat to the US) have been revealed.

And then there are these 20:

"Our intelligence sources tell us that he (Saddam) has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

The IAEA as well as dozens of leading scientists declared said tubes unsuitable for nuclear weapons production -- months before the war.

The CIA has assumed tepid responsibility for not insisting Bush remove the sixteen words about British evidence of Hussein's alleged attempts to purchase uranium from Africa. (Since when does the US go to war on the basis of British intel anyway?)
Fine.
Bush, however, must take responsibility for the rest his words, all 117 of which were lies. Lies that have resulted in the deaths of over two hundred American GIs, the wounding of at least 1,046, and the senseless killing of more than six thousand innocent Iraqi civilians. If this doesn't qualify as impeachable (and even indictable) high crimes and misdemeanors, then nothing does.

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