Re: The War in Iraq "is retaliation for Saddam's role in 9/11" say 85% of American Troops
- From: "Jake" <jcbepstein@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 3 Mar 2006 04:26:15 -0800
Thumper a écrit :
On Thu, 02 Mar 2006 21:55:16 -0800, El Castor
<anyonethere@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thumper <jaylsmith@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Care to document that?
It's been documented here many times. You just don't want to admit
it.
I suppose you think that the soldiers believe it because the mess cook
told them so.
Your stubborn refusal to see the truth is really unbecoming of you.
El Castor will deny any documentation but for you I will offer the
following.
The administration has been the master of the double word game
with Cheney doing the major playing. In his interview of
June 2004 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5233810/) said that
"'We have never been able to prove that there was a connection,'
with regard to Saddam-Al Qaeda.
Following that statement he challenged the bipartisan Sept. 11
commission finding that no "collaborative relationship" between
the former Iraqi leader and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network
insisting "we don't know". This is contradicted when article
says "
the vice president defended the administration's view of Iraq's l
inks to al-Qaida, saying the "the evidence is overwhelming".
So he talks out of both sides of his mouth on this issue.
Politicicans usually do.
For the less than the sophisticated (the US soliders in Iraq)
who want to believe there is a relationship this is good enough.
It allows Bush and company to continue to politically expoit
this idea without supporting it directly. These statements are
purposefully misleading with the intent of covering their asses
but getting maximum political advantage out of trying to
maintain the Saddam-Al Qaeda collaboration idea in the
minds of the general public.
As for Bush in his comments to the press on September 25, 2002,
he compared al-Qaeda and Saddam:
"Al-Qaeda hides, Saddam doesn't, but the danger is,
is that they work in concert. The danger is that al-Qaeda
becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his
hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass
destruction around the world.... You can't distinguish
between al-Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about
the war on terror.... They're both equally as bad, and
equally as evil, and equally as destructive."
Clever wording. Working in "concert" does not strictly means
they are actively collaboratiing but it is a form of confabulation,
fusing truths, half truths and lies.
I find the following a good read---
What Bush Was Told About Iraq
By Murray Waas
The National Journal
Thursday 02 March 2006
Two highly classified intelligence reports delivered directly
to President Bush before the Iraq war cast doubt on key public
assertions made by the president, Vice President Cheney, and other
administration officials as justifications for invading Iraq and
toppling Saddam Hussein, according to records and knowledgeable
sources.
The first report, delivered to Bush in early October 2002, was
a one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate that discussed
whether Saddam's procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes was for
the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon.
Among other things, the report stated that the Energy
Department and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and
Research believed that the tubes were "intended for conventional
weapons," a view disagreeing with that of other intelligence agencies,
including the CIA, which believed that the tubes were intended for a
nuclear bomb.
The disclosure that Bush was informed of the DOE and State
dissents is the first evidence that the president himself knew of the
sharp debate within the government over the aluminum tubes during the
time that he, Cheney, and other members of the Cabinet were citing the
tubes as clear evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Neither the
president nor the vice president told the public about the disagreement
among the agencies.
When U.S. inspectors entered Iraq after the fall of Saddam's
regime, they determined that Iraq's nuclear program had been dormant
for more than a decade and that the aluminum tubes had been used only
for artillery shells.
The second classified report, delivered to Bush in early
January 2003, was also a summary of a National Intelligence Estimate,
this one focusing on whether Saddam would launch an unprovoked attack
on the United States, either directly, or indirectly by working with
terrorists.
The report stated that U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously
agreed that it was unlikely that Saddam would try to attack the United
States - except if "ongoing military operations risked the imminent
demise of his regime" or if he intended to "extract revenge" for such
an assault, according to records and sources.
The single dissent in the report again came from State's Bureau
of Intelligence and Research, known as INR, which believed that the
Iraqi leader was "unlikely to conduct clandestine attacks against the
U.S. homeland even if [his] regime's demise is imminent" as the result
of a U.S. invasion.
On at least four earlier occasions, beginning in the spring of
2002, according to the same records and sources, the president was
informed during his morning intelligence briefing that U.S.
intelligence agencies believed it was unlikely that Saddam was an
imminent threat to the United States.
However, in the months leading up to the war, Bush, Cheney, and
Cabinet members repeatedly asserted that Saddam was likely to use
chemical or biological weapons against the United States or to provide
such weapons to Al Qaeda or another terrorist group.
The Bush administration used the potential threat from Saddam
as a major rationale in making the case to go to war. The president
cited the threat in an address to the United Nations on September 12,
2002, in an October 7, 2002, speech to the American people, and in his
State of the Union address on January 28, 2003.
The one-page documents prepared for Bush are known as the
"President's Summary" of the much longer and more detailed National
Intelligence Estimates that combine the analysis and judgments of
agencies throughout the intelligence community.
An NIE, according to the Web site of the National Intelligence
Council - the interagency group that coordinates the documents'
production - represents "the coordinated judgments of the Intelligence
Community regarding the likely course of future events" and is written
with the goal of providing "policy makers with the best, unvarnished,
and unbiased information - regardless of whether analytic judgments
conform to U.S. policy." (The January 2003 NIE, for example, was titled
"Nontraditional Threats to the U.S. Homeland Through 2007.")
As many as six to eight agencies, foremost among them the CIA,
the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security
Agency, and the INR, contribute to the drafting of an NIE. If any one
of those intelligence agencies disagrees with the majority view on
major conclusions, the NIE includes the dissenting view.
The one-page summary for the president allows intelligence
agencies to emphasize what they believe to be the conclusions from the
broader NIE that are the most important to communicate to the
commander-in-chief.
The President's Summary is among the most highly classified
papers in the government. References to the summaries are contained in
footnotes in the so-called Robb-Silberman report - officially, the
report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United
States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction - that was issued in March
2005 on the use of intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. The
White House has refused to declassify the summaries or to give them to
congressional committees.
The summaries stated that both the Energy and State departments
dissented on the aluminum tubes question. This is the first evidence
that Bush was aware of the intense debate within the government during
the time that he, Cheney, and members of the Cabinet were citing the
procurement of the tubes as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program.
In his address to the U.N. General Assembly on September 12,
2002, the president asserted, "Iraq has made several attempts to buy
high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear
weapon."
On October 7, 2002, less than a week after Bush was given the
summary, he said in a speech in Cincinnati: "Evidence indicates that
Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein held
numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his
'nuclear mujahedeen' - his nuclear holy warriors ... . Iraq has
attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment
needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for
nuclear weapons."
On numerous other occasions, Cheney, then-National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and
then-U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte cited Iraq's procurement of
aluminum tubes without disclosing that the intelligence community was
split as to their end use. The fact that the president was informed of
the dissents by Energy and State is also significant because Rice and
other administration officials have said that Bush did not know about
those dissenting views when he made claims about the purported uses for
the tubes.
On July 11, 2003, aboard Air Force One during a presidential
trip to Africa, Rice was asked about the National Intelligence Estimate
and whether the president knew of the dissenting views among
intelligence agencies regarding Iraq's procurement of the aluminum
tubes.
Months earlier, disagreement existed within the administration
over how to characterize the aluminum tubes in a speech that
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell gave to the U.N. on February 5,
2003. Breaking ranks with others in the administration, Powell decided
to refer to the internal debate among government agencies over Iraq's
intended use of the tubes.
Asked about this by a reporter on Air Force One, Rice said:
"I'm saying that when we put [Powell's speech] together ... the
secretary decided that he would caveat the aluminum tubes, which he did
.... . The secretary also has an intelligence arm that happened to hold
that view."
Rice added, "Now, if there were any doubts about the underlying
intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the
president, to the vice president, or to me."
The one-page October 2002 President's Summary specifically told
Bush that although "most agencies judge" that the use of the aluminum
tubes was "related to a uranium enrichment effort ... INR and DOE
believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional
weapons uses."
The lengthier NIE - more than 90 pages - contained
significantly more detail describing the disagreement between the CIA
and the Pentagon's DIA on one hand, which believed that the tubes were
meant for centrifuges, and State's INR and the Energy Department, which
believed that they were meant for artillery shells. Administration
officials had said that the president would not have read the
full-length paper. They also had said that many of the details of INR's
dissent were contained in a special text box that was positioned far
away from the main text of the report.
But the one-page summary, several senior government officials
said in interviews, was written specifically for Bush, was handed to
the president by then-CIA Director George Tenet, and was read in
Tenet's presence.
In addition, Rice, Cheney, and dozens of other high-level Bush
administration policy makers received a highly classified intelligence
assessment, known as a Senior Executive Memorandum, on the aluminum
tubes issue. Circulated on January 10, 2003, the memo was titled
"Questions on Why Iraq Is Procuring Aluminum Tubes and What the IAEA
Has Found to Date."
The paper included discussion regarding the fact that the INR,
Energy, and the United Nations atomic energy watchdog, the
International Atomic Energy Agency, all believed that Iraq was using
the aluminum tubes for conventional weapons programs.
The lengthier NIE also contained a note regarding the aluminum
tubes disagreement:
"In INR's view, Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is
central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear
weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question
are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of
technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have
concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for
use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds
unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that
they are intended for that purpose.
"INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended
for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets."
One week after Rice's comments aboard Air Force One, on July
18, 2003, the Bush administration declassified some portions of the
NIE, including the passage quoted above, regarding INR's dissent
regarding the aluminum tubes.
But the Bush administration steadfastly continued to refuse to
declassify the President's Summary of the NIE, which in the words of
one senior official, is the "one document which illustrates what the
president knew and when he knew it." The administration also refused to
furnish copies of the paper to congressional intelligence committees.
That a summary was also prepared for Bush on the question of
Saddam's intentions regarding an unprovoked attack on the United States
is significant because the administration has claimed that the
president was unaware of intelligence information that conflicted with
his public statements and those of the vice president and members of
his Cabinet on the justifications for attacking Iraq.
According to interviews and records, Bush personally read the
one-page summary in Tenet's presence during the morning intelligence
briefing, and the two spoke about it at some length. Sources familiar
with the summary said it was highly significant that the president was
informed that it was the unanimous conclusion of the intelligence
agencies participating in the production of the January 2003 NIE that
Saddam was unlikely to consider attacking the U.S. unless Iraq was
attacked first.
Cheney received virtually the same intelligence information,
according to the same records and interviews. The president's summaries
have been shared with the vice president as a matter of course during
the Bush presidency.
The conclusion among intelligence agencies that Saddam was
unlikely to consider attacking the United States unless attacked first
was also outlined in Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs, highly
classified daily intelligence papers distributed to several hundred
executive branch officials and to the congressional intelligence
oversight committees.
During the second half of 2002, the president and vice
president repeatedly cited the threat from Saddam in their public
statements. "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now
has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them
to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us," Cheney
declared on August 26, 2002, to the national convention of the Veterans
of Foreign Wars.
In his September 12 address to the U.N. General Assembly, Bush
said: "With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and
deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that
regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these
weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th
would be a prelude to far greater horrors."
In an October 7 address to the nation, Bush cited intelligence
showing that Iraq had a fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles
that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons. "We're
concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions
targeting the United States," the president declared.
"We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a
common enemy - the United States of America," he added. "Iraq could
decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a
terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists
could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any
fingerprints."
In his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, the
president once again warned the nation: "Some have said we must not act
until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants
announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they
strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all
actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.
Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a
strategy, and it is not an option."
In March 2003, as American, British, and other military forces
prepared to invade Iraq, the president repeated the warnings during a
summit in the Azores islands of Portugal and in a March 17 speech to
the nation on the eve of the war. "The danger is clear: Using chemical,
biological, or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of
Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill
thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country,"
Bush said in the March 17 speech. "The United States and other nations
did nothing to deserve or invite this threat. But we will do everything
to defeat it."
Senior Bush administration officials say they had good reason
to disbelieve the intelligence that was provided to them by the CIA,
noting that the intelligence the agency had provided earlier regarding
Iraq was flawed.
And more recently, a 511-page bipartisan report by the Senate
Intelligence Committee on prewar intelligence regarding Iraq concluded:
"Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was
little useful intelligence collected that helped analysis determine the
Iraqi regime's possible links with Al Qaeda."
The White House declined to comment for this story. In a
statement, Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security
Council said, "The president of the United States has talked about this
matter directly, as have a myriad of other administration officials. At
this juncture, we have nothing to add to that body of information."
The 9/11 commission concluded in its final report that no
evidence existed of a "collaborative operational relationship" between
Saddam and Al Qaeda, adding, "Nor have we seen evidence indicating that
Iraq cooperated with Al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks
against the United States."
.
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