Originally posted by lazs2
Ok.. we didn't catch him with nukes or biologicals... The whole world thought he had em...
He threw the inspectors out of his country so... what were we to assume? Why would he not let the inspectors go where they wanted? He was after all.. the guy who lost. Part of losing was being inspected.
You blue helmet loving impotent countries sent him nasty letters. We said... you don't get to run the country anymore or sit on the gold toiletseat.
We let the people vote and form their own government.
What did we do wrong again? Other than get involved with the UN.
lazs
Refresher:
RM: I think our citizens can be forgiven for being a little confused at this point. We have the Secretary of State, Mr. Colin Powell, saying to us in February 2001, “Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.” Condoleeza Rice, July 29, 2001: “We are able to keep his arms from him, his military forces have not been rebuilt.”
Then all of a sudden, we have weapons of mass destruction galore in Iraq. Shortly after 911, we have the president telling us, ‘There is no doubt that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” We have Secretary Rumsfeld saying, in his typically quotable way, “There is no debate in the world as to whether that they have those weapons. We all know that. A trained ape knows that.” He even professed to know where they were, out there-- Tikrit, Baghdad, northeast, southwest of there. How do you explain that, Mr. Ritter? How do you explain first of all, that there were none there before 911, then all of a sudden there were a plethora of same. What was going on?
SR: First of all, let’s also refer to statements made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when justifying the analysis put forward that there were weapons of mass destruction. He acknowledged that the United States suffered from a lack of current intelligence data about the status of Iraq’s WMD program. That in fact the foundation of the analysis was based upon data that existed prior to 1998, that is data that existed when UN inspection teams, of which I was a part of, served in Iraq.
Now, this is the data that prompted Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice to make their statements in 2001 that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. This is data that was known to the Clinton administration. Since 1995, the United States intelligence community knew that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed in the field of ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons and biological weapons. What cause the Bush administration to change its stated assessment is the policy decision undertaken by the Bush administration to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein from power. Around this policy, the Bush administration fixed intelligence, including analysis that it claims was the result of a reexamination of the facts in light of the events of September 11, 2001-- namely that because of the terrorist attacks against the United States on that date, the United States could no longer tolerate an uncertain situation in Iraq. The reason why I highlight this is that the Bush administration in making these statements acknowledges the uncertainty that exists regarding WMD. This is a far cry from the statements made by the president and indeed members of his administration, under oath to the Congress of the United States, that they knew these weapons existed.
http://www.bushcommission.org/?q=node/30
