Pre-war data on Iraq not solid: Powell

[LAWCobra]

Originally posted by Thrawn
Bush lied when he and his administration said countless times that Iraq was in possion of WMD.  They didn't know that.  Thier intelligence agencies did say that.  They thought Iraq probably had WMD.



Why should I?  I never claimed that, you are just putting words in my mouth.

"WASHINGTON - CIA Director George Tenet, in a passionate defense of agency findings, declared Thursday that his analysts "never said there was an imminent threat'' from Saddam Hussein."

"Tenet said "there is no consensus'' within U.S. intelligence over whether two trailers found in Iraq after the war were intended for biological weapons production, as the administration first claimed."

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/7889661.htm


"
Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq
Clear-Cut Assertions Were Made Before Arms Assessment Was Completed

By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 7, 2004; Page A17


In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended Thursday.

In fact, they made some of their most unequivocal assertions about unconventional weapons before the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was completed.

Iraq "is a grave and gathering danger," Bush told the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002. At the White House two weeks later -- after referring to a British government report that Iraq could launch "a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order" is given -- he went on to say, "Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX -- nerve gas -- or someday a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally."

Three weeks later, on the day the NIE was delivered to Congress, Bush told lawmakers in the White House Rose Garden that Iraq's current course was "a threat of unique urgency."

On Thursday, summarizing the NIE's conclusions, Tenet said: "They never said Iraq was an imminent threat."

The administration's prewar comments -- and the more cautious, qualified phrasings of intelligence analysts -- are at the heart of the debate over whether the faulty prewar claims resulted from bad intelligence or exaggeration by top White House officials -- or both.

Former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told senators last week that caveats often fall by the wayside "the higher you go up" the bureaucratic chain. At the top, he said, "you read the headlines, you read the summary, you're busy, you've got other things to do."

Administration supporters say Bush, Vice President Cheney and others were simply extrapolating from the comprehensive intelligence provided by Tenet's intelligence community. Critics say Bush and his Cabinet had already decided to go to war, regardless of what the intelligence efforts found.

The controversy, arising during the Democratic presidential primary campaign, has taken on a partisan hue. Some Democrats, however, say they perceived GOP partisanship earlier, when Republicans advocated an invasion of Iraq before the 2002 congressional elections. Bush said on Sept.13, 2002, that he did not think he could explain to voters the position of some Democrats who said Congress should wait for the United Nations to authorize the use of force before giving the president the authority he wanted.

Now that extended efforts to find weapons of mass destruction have proved futile, some are asking why Bush, Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld used unequivocal rhetoric to describe the threat from Iraq when the intelligence on the subject was much more nuanced and subjective.

For example, when Bush on Sept. 24, 2002, repeated the British claim that Iraq's chemical weapons could be activated within 45 minutes, he ignored the fact that U.S. intelligence mistrusted the source and that the claim never appeared in the October 2002 U.S. estimate.

On Aug. 26, 2002, Cheney said: "Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon." The estimate, several weeks later, would say it would take as many as five years, unless Baghdad immediately obtained weapons-grade materials.

In the same speech, Cheney raised the specter that Hussein would give chemical or biological weapons to terrorists, a prospect invoked often in the weeks to come. "Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network, or a murderous dictator, or the two working together, constitute as grave a threat as can be imagined," Cheney said.

It would be more than a month later that a declassified portion of the NIE would show that U.S. intelligence analysts had forecast that Hussein would give such weapons to terrorists only if Iraq were invaded and he faced annihilation.

"The probability of him initiating an attack . . . in the foreseeable future . . . I think would be low," a senior CIA official told the Senate intelligence committee during a classified briefing on the estimate on Oct. 2, 2002. The CIA released a partial transcript five days later after committee Democrats complained that a published "white paper" on Iraq's weapons had not given the public a fair reading of what the classified NIE contained.

On Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney said of Hussein on NBC's "Meet the Press": "We do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon." Cheney was referring to the aluminum tubes that some analysts believed could be used for a centrifuge to help make nuclear materials; others believed they were for an antiaircraft rocket.

Such absolute certainty, however, did not appear in the estimate. Tenet said Thursday that the controversy has yet to be cleared up.

On Sept. 19, 2002, Rumsfeld, speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said: "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq." The October estimate contained no similar language.

Speaking to the House Armed Services Committee on Sept. 18, 2002, Rumsfeld described an immediate threat from biological weapons. Hussein, he said, could deploy "sleeper cells armed with biological weapons to attack us from within -- and then deny any knowledge or connection to the attacks."

While the intelligence community believed Hussein had biological agents such as anthrax, and that they could be quickly produced and weaponized for delivery by bombs, missiles or aerial sprayers, the October 2002 estimate said: "We had no specific information on the types or quantities of weapons, agents, or stockpiles at Baghdad's disposal."

Tenet's "provisional bottom line" on biological weapons, he said Thursday, is that research and development efforts were underway in Iraq "that would have permitted a rapid shift to agent production if seed stocks were available. But we do not know if production took place -- and just as clearly -- we have not yet found biological weapons."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A20194-2004Feb6¬Found=true

Who cares about all that.
Im an American I am not mad If the President Imbellished things a bit to get what he needed to.
As a canuck why would you even give a rats arse what we do?

I think you really need to get laid.

[Nash]

Feeble: check

Irrelivant: check

Highly irrational: uhm... yup. check

Good stuff. See what I'm getting at Thrawn? With just a little less focus you too can become a grand poobah of teh intardnet.

[Thrawn]

Thank Holden, I came a across 687 before I posted to Arlo with the request.  Although it has the word "terrorism" in it.  It is certainly not used in context that his alleged resolution does.  It doesn't speciifcally mention Iraqi ties to terrorism.  Nor does it specifically forbid such ties, that aren't mentioned.

so the "intellegence community believed" SH had WMD's.... didn't they...

Fair enough, and the claims the Bush administration made regarding quanities, types, locations, deployability, attempts to get yellow cake from Nigeria etc?


"Good stuff. See what I'm getting at Thrawn? With just a little less focus you too can become a grand poobah of teh intardnet."


It's all a question of what you want to accomplish.  If you want to have a rational discourse and maybe learn something or get a temporary ego boost.  Although I struggle with that from time to time also. I blame Toad.

Ages ago he posted a link to this site.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

It was a great palce to start.

[Pete]

the Iraqi people had the leader they deserved.  In fact, he is still alive.  I recommend releasing Hussein back into the population and getting the heck out of their while the allied military death toll is under 1000.  Hussein would have that place squared away within two weeks.  Of course, 500,000 Iraqis would be liquidated in a few months but thats just a drop in the proverbial bucket.  I really dont care about any of those people.  They are not capabale of democratic rule.  They are not evolved to that point, from a cultural point of view, unfortunately.

[FUNKED1]

Originally posted by Pete
the Iraqi people had the leader they deserved.  In fact, he is still alive.  I recommend releasing Hussein back into the population and getting the heck out of their while the allied military death toll is under 1000.  Hussein would have that place squared away within two weeks.  Of course, 500,000 Iraqis would be liquidated in a few months but thats just a drop in the proverbial bucket.  I really dont care about any of those people.  They are not capabale of democratic rule.  They are not evolved to that point, from a cultural point of view, unfortunately.

I agree, we know the WMD are gone, mission accomplished, let Saddam have his country back.

[LAWCobra]

Originally posted by FUNKED1
I agree, we know the WMD are gone, mission accomplished, let Saddam have his country back.

Oh I agree to But I say Let them have SH corpse.

That animal dont deserve to live let alone govern a country that could breed a whole new generation of terrorist.

Do you think old SH would let by gones be bye gones after we killed his sons PLEASE!

[LAWCobra]

We should either pull out now or go all out apechit on there arses.
Pull no punches air strikes full attack not some half asred invasion like the last one.
I mean go thrue them like watermelon thrue a goose as The great George S Patton would say.
There aint no room for nicities here people our troops are getting picked off in ignorant ways .
Not in battles but in ambushes.
We need FORCE

SRY for rambling But like me or hate me I hurt everytime I hear of one of our troops killed I really do.


By God they are Americans and they deserve the best our government can give them and It aint happening !

Stop Poosy footing around and Kill all the mother butterers or get the hell out.

I was almost old enough for Veit Nam And I remember seeing on the news the caskets being unloaded off the planes.

We aint seeing that in this war but If It keeps on a going th #s will start growing just like they did in s east asia.

MR BUSH Show some more BALLS and get on with it you aint got much time.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Nash
Well, it's hard to say...

All we can say for certain is that many pre-Columbian navigators thought the world flat and professed that idea.

And, Nash, we know them to be wrong, not liars.  It is important that you get the point, not remember the example.

[Thrawn]

Indeed, and then in the end you can bury them in mass graves...

Ah screw it the your humour value isn't what it once was and you aren't worth the bandwidth anymore.  

[LAWCobra]

Just dont want to see another Veit Nam thats all.

[Thrawn]

Right, just another Mai Lai.  


And another!  

[Arlo]

Originally posted by Thrawn


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And, of course, the UN resolutions that specifically mention Iraqi ties with terrorism and the sanctions imposed forbidding such were made up because everyone knows there never were such ties and never could be such.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Which resolution is that?

687 (1991)

[Arlo]

Originally posted by Thrawn
Thank Holden, I came a across 687 before I posted to Arlo with the request.  Although it has the word "terrorism" in it.  It is certainly not used in context that his alleged resolution does.  It doesn't speciifcally mention Iraqi ties to terrorism.  Nor does it specifically forbid such ties, that aren't mentioned.

Several times, aamof. And it doesn't have to mention specific details of who, where, what, when, etc. It's not a police report. It's a resolution prohibiting acts of terrorism on the part of Iraq. Specifically aimed at Iraq. The U.N. doesn't make a point of such resolutions against any old country "just because."

Keep workin' on it.

[straffo]

Originally posted by Arlo
[B And it doesn't have to mention specific details of who, where, what, when, etc. It's not a police report. It's a resolution  [/B]

BS if it's how a diplomatic text should be written ,else anyone can at anytime say anything from such a "fuzzy" document.

A contrario to what you pretend this document is very specific.


I hope you don't have signed an insurance policy not mentioning "specific details of who, where, what, when, etc"

Because the day you will need it you will cry

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by Arlo
Several times, aamof. And it doesn't have to mention specific details of who, where, what, when, etc. It's not a police report. It's a resolution prohibiting acts of terrorism on the part of Iraq. Specifically aimed at Iraq. The U.N. doesn't make a point of such resolutions against any old country "just because."

Keep workin' on it.

]


No, what it does have to is specifically mention Iraqi ties with terrorism and the sanctions imposed forbidding such.  Resolution 687 clear doesn't do that.  There is no mention of sanction at all, nor is there any mention to Iraqi "ties" with terrorism.