Bush's Impeachable Offences

[slamdunkpro]

Didn't the Iraqies gas the Northern Kurds? Didn't they also drop little paper things with some sort of bio agent a few years ago?

Gas & bio weapons are WMD right? so at one point they DID have them right?

[JihadOnTheRiver]

[ QUOTE ]

Doesn't it bother you though that this government went to war -- at the expense of the lives of American men and women -- based upon woefully incorrect information? Shouldn't we be absolutely positive about the basis for going to war before we do so? I mean, really, the magnitude of the incorrect information (assuming there was no intent to mislead the public) is staggering. This bothers me a great deal.

[/ QUOTE ]

OK, now you're getting personal. If another half-wit hippie uses the "expense of the lives of American men and women" excuse, I'm going to seriously lose it. I am a Naval Aviator. Although I do not speak for the entire core of the US Military, the stats do. The military largely supports its CIC (unlike some other recent immoral fornicating douche-bags) and the reasons put forth for going to war. Many of my fellow USNA graduates that are now USMC infantry officers will tell you that the ground force that is largely responsible for the "fighting and dying" portion of this war, do in fact believe that this war is worth fighting.

Whether or not you consider this war to be right, wrong, or you're indifferent, you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself (the entire liberal movement) for repeatedly referring to the military with such indifference and treating them as a pawn in your moral adjustment of America. Stop it.

-Jihad on you

[Drunk Bob]

States secret act ?

[Utah]

Do you mind if I take a crack at it?

http://www.nationalreview.com/robbin...0506060801.asp

This is a conservative site for sure for they are almost always factually correct as far as I can tell.


Causing a Commotion
“Downing Street Memo” is old news.

It is July 2002. A British report notes that Prime Minister Tony Blair had “decided Britain must back any US assault and had ordered defence planners to begin the preparations for a new war in the Gulf.” The report claims “President Bush has already made up his mind. This is going to happen. It is a given … What we are waiting for is to be told the details of how and when and where.”


A shocking secret document recently leaked from Whitehall? No, it is the London Observer, in an article published July 21, 2002, p. 2. Two days later nearly identical language would be recorded in the so-called "Downing Street Memo," the minutes of a British cabinet meeting recorded by foreign-policy aide Matthew Rycroft and published “gotcha!” style days before the recent parliamentary election.

The memo raises three issues dear to the hearts of President Bush's critics — the timing of the decision to go to war with Saddam, the WMD rationale, and the use (read: abuse) of intelligence to create the casus belli. One paragraph in the memo conveniently contains all three:

C [Richard Dearlove, Head of MI-6] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

This and other excerpts have caused a furor on the American Left. Ralph Nader is calling for impeachment (again), and John Kerry has vowed to bring the matter to the Senate floor. Of course, the memo simply contains the impressions of an aide of the impressions of British-cabinet officials of the impressions of unnamed people they spoke to in the United States about what they thought the president was thinking. It is sad when hearsay thrice-removed raises this kind of ruckus, especially since a version had been reported three years ago. As smoking guns go, it is not high caliber.

Was the president committed to go to war with Iraq in July 2002?
In the summer of 2002 the policy of the United States was that Saddam Hussein should be removed from power. However, that does not mean that the decision to go to war had already been made.

Contingency planning for military operations against Iraq had begun as early as November 2001. This is no secret; the full timeline along with a wealth of details can be found in General Tommy Franks’s memoir American Solider. The plan that became known as OPLAN 1003V began to be put together in earnest in January 2002. The existence of war planning does not in itself prove that the use of force was inevitable. The purpose was to provide the president with the full range of credible alternatives for pursuing U.S. policy vis-à-vis Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Regime change had been U.S. policy since October 31, 1998, when President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act. It was not a state secret. On February 12, 2002, Colin Powell stated that "With respect to Iraq, it has long been, for several years now, a policy of the United States government that regime change would be in the best interests of the region, the best interests of the Iraqi people. And we are looking at a variety of options that would bring that about." The policy had bipartisan support; in June 2002 Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said, "There is broad support for a regime change in Iraq. The question is how do we do it and when do we do it." It was also an international objective. On April 6, 2002, during a summit in Crawford, Texas, Prime Minister Blair said that regime change in Iraq was the policy of Great Britain, and that failure to act against Saddam was “not an option.” Blair pledged to support military action against Iraq, should that become necessary.

But had the president made up his mind that regime change would necessitate war? British journalist Trevor McDonald sparred with the president at the summit to try to get him to say so, but Bush stuck to his position. "I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go,” he said. "That's about all I'm willing to share with you."

What the president would not share was that other means were already being employed. The Downing Street Memo mentions “spikes of activity,” which probably refers to the program of covert operations begun against Iraq in the spring of 2002. This program was revealed the following June. Covert action against Iraq was hardly controversial. On June 16, 2002, on ABC’s This Week, House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt said that congressional leaders had been briefed on the secret directive by the White House, and stated that “It is an appropriate action to take. I hope it succeeds in its quest." Senator Joseph Biden, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Face the Nation, "If the covert action doesn't work, we better be prepared to move forward with another action, an overt action, and it seems to me that we can't afford to miss."

By the time the Downing Street Memo was written overt action against Iraq was being widely discussed, spurred in part by the July 5, 2002, publication of some of the war plans in the New York Times. (A previous version had been leaked in May by the Los Angeles Times.) The July 5 article led to rampant speculation about the inevitability of war, especially in Britain, and whomever Dearlove and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw were talking to then may well have been reflecting this mood. Moreover, either Dearlove or Straw, or one of their staff, may well have been the “Whitehall source” for the Observer piece two days before the cabinet meeting in question. Either that or they read it in the paper and repeated it at the meeting. My question: Had they ever spoken to the president to get his views first-person?

Why use WMDs as a rationale for war?
In the July 25, 2002, memo, Foreign Secretary Straw is said to have said,

We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force. The Attorney-General [Lord Goldsmith] said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change. The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD.

The WMDs justification for regime change was of course not new. On November 26, 2001, President Bush was asked what would happen if Saddam Hussein did not allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq. “He’ll find out,” he replied. The president had grown concerned with a scenario that came to be known in policy circles as the “nexus,” a potential relationship between rogue states, nuclear weapons, and terrorists acting as delivery systems. The president was referring to this in his January 29, 2002, State of the Union address when he said, “The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.” That the WMD issue was viewed as diplomatically useful, i.e., the easiest way to invoke international law, is not a surprise. Former Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz stated as much in his May 9-10, 2003, interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair (see also NRO analysis here).

The WMD approach worked exactly as intended. The Downing Street Memo is a very good analytical piece, and demonstrates a sound understanding of Saddam’s emotional state and probable future moves. The cabinet discusses presenting Saddam with an ultimatum to let the U.N. inspectors back in, knowing that this would either settle the question, or lead to recalcitrance and defiance on Saddam’s part, creating circumstances justifying intervention. As a strategic analysis, it is spot on, and it formed the road map for the eventual lead-up to war. Of course Saddam could have simply cooperated with the U.N. and denied the Coalition any pretext for intervening; was it the Coalition’s fault that he reverted to type and disregarded the U.N. resolution?

Unfortunately, so much emphasis was placed on the WMD rationale that the failure to turn up the expected weapons brought the entire regime-change effort into question. However, there were other ways the U.N. might have been engaged. The mismanagement and barefaced corruption of the “Oil for Food” program could have been leveraged for this same purpose.

Was the WMD Intelligence Faked?
Dearlove’s comments include the intriguing passage noted above, “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” To the president’s critics, the meaning is clear — the WMD intelligence was being faked to support the rationale for intervention.

This passage needs some clarification. Maybe Rycroft or Dearlove could elaborate; by “fixed around” did they mean that intelligence was being falsified or that intelligence and information were being gathered to support the policy? There is nothing wrong with the latter — it is the purpose of the intelligence community to provide the information decision-makers need, and the marshal their resources accordingly.

But if Dearlove meant the former, he should be called upon to substantiate his charge. It can be weighed against the exhaustive investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on prewar intelligence assessments in Iraq. The committee examined this very question, whether the White House had pressured the intelligence community to reach predetermined conclusions supporting the case for war. The investigation found no evidence that “administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities” or that “the Vice President's visits to the Central Intelligence Agency were attempts to pressure analysts, were perceived as intended to pressure analysts by those who participated in the briefings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, or did pressure analysts to change their assessments.” One would think that the Senate investigation would have somewhat more weight than the secondhand impressions of a foreign intelligence officer, but if Mr. Dearlove is able to elaborate, one hopes he will.

The memo itself notes that the British assumed that Saddam had limited WMD capabilities — and the September 24, 2002, British white paper on the topic spelled out exactly what Whitehall believed to be the facts. Surely, this was not the result of pressure from the vice president or any other American officials.

I think the fact that the Downing Street Memo had once been classified has a lot to do with its current notoriety. People might suppose that a “secret” document must ipso facto be important. But not always, and not in equal measure. The section of the memo dealing with strategic planning, yes, that was worth keeping close hold on. But the speculations about the inner workings of the American government? Sounds like the same things one could have heard on any newscast. Looking at the document in context it is hard to see what the commotion is about. Most of what might be thought sensational has already been written about elsewhere, to little fanfare. The charge of intelligence fraud (if it is such a charge) has already been investigated and found baseless. And the allegations that the president had already decided to go to war and was thus deceiving the American people are personal opinions based on unsubstantiated impressions from unnamed sources.

You want a smoking gun? Check out the real thing. Makes the Downing Street Memo look rather anemic.

[Utah]

[ QUOTE ]
but rather it was a group of people who didn't listen to contrary opinions

[/ QUOTE ]Where was the contrary opinion? I cant think of a single nation that didnt think he had the weapons. If I recall, the debate was war vs. diplomatic means. It wasnt really a question of whether he had weapons.

[natedogg]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
but rather it was a group of people who didn't listen to contrary opinions

[/ QUOTE ]Where was the contrary opinion? I cant think of a single nation that didnt think he had the weapons. If I recall, the debate was war vs. diplomatic means. It wasnt really a question of whether he had weapons.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you might be forgetting about the important world figure Sean Penn, who loudly proclaimed there were no WMDs after visiting Bagdad to ask Saddam's henchmen if there were any WMDs.

natedogg

[CORed]

As anyone who has read my prior posts here knows, I am no fan of Bush or the war in Iraq. However, I think the WMD in Iraq was more a case of Bush and his appointees believing their own propaganda than of deliberate lying. I think it's pretty clear that Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, et. al had long desired to go to war against Iraq, and saw 9/11 as an opportunity to make that happen. I also think it's pretty clear that they felt that the Iraq's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction was the best way to sell the war to the UN and the American people. It also is pretty clear that Bush and company did not want to see any intelligence that did not support their belief that Iraq had WMD. To be fair, it was not unreasonable to believe that Sadaam possessed WMD. After all, he possessed, and used repeatedly, chemical weapons before the Gulf War. He was actively engaged in trying to develop nuclear and biological weapons before the Gulf War. He played cat and mouse with the UN inspectors and eventually threw them out.

Nonetheless, I believed, before we invaded Iraq, that invading Iraq was a bad idea, for two reasons. I bellieved that Sadaam, when backed into a corner, would use his WMD, possibly against American forces, possibly against Israel, or possibly in some grand homicidal-suicidal gesture, killing Iraqi's, Americans and maybe himself, or some combination of these three scenarios. I belived that continuing the policy of containment. sanctions, and deterrence was the safer course than an invasion.

The second reason that I opposed the invasion of Iraq was that I believed that occupying Iraq would prove much more difficult than conquering it, and that we would end up bogged down in a querilla conflict with no good way out.

Fortunately, I was wrong on the first point. As it turned out, our previous policy of santions, containment, and deterrence had worked far better than I had imagined, and Sadaam had in fact been a threat only to his own people.

Unfortunately, I was on the money with the second reason, and we are now faced with several alternatives, all bad.

We can cut and run, leaving Iraq in civil war and chaos, probably to eventually be taken over by somebody as inimical to our interests as Sadaam Hussein.

We can put enough force there to rule Iraq with an iron fist, possibly reinstating the draft to get enough troops to accomplish this, and probably occupying Iraq for many years.

We can continue on the present course, and hope that we can build a democratic government that lasts a decent interval after we withdraw before it is replaced by a dictatorship (if we're really lucky, it will be reasonably friendly to our interests. If not, it will be another Sadaam, or worse, a fanatical Islmist), or collapses into civil war, again with a dictatorship, or dictatorships, eventually resulting.

We can partition Iraq, and try to establish separate governments for Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. This alternative poses the risk of the three entities fighting over territroy and resources, and will alienate the Turks, a valuable ally, as any Kurdish state is likely to have ambitions to annex territory in other countries with Kurdish populations, including Turkey.

Is any of these alternatives better than leaving Sadaam in power? It remains to be seen, but it seems likely that the eventual outcome will be little better, and not worth the cost. Is it possible that we will eventually succeed in establishing democracy in Iraq? While I think this is a desirable outcome, I think it is very unlikely that it will happen. I would love to be proved wrong.

Was the Invasion of Iraq bad policy? IMO, yes. Was it impeachable? IMO, no.

Is Bush a war criminal? If he did in fact know that his claim that Iraq had WMD was false, yes. If he truly believed that Sadaam had WMD and that there was an imminent threat that he would provide them to terrorists, no. He was wrong, but the war was justifiable, based on what he believed to be true, with or without UN approval. However, I think that his goal of imposing democracy on Iraq by force is a pipe dream. I also think that the occupation has been handled so ineptly as to eliminate whatever slim chance it may have had of succeeding in that goal.

[CORed]

[ QUOTE ]
Doesn't it bother you though that this government went to war -- at the expense of the lives of American men and women -- based upon woefully incorrect information?

[/ QUOTE ]
It bothers be a lot.
[ QUOTE ]
Shouldn't we be absolutely positive about the basis for going to war before we do so?

[/ QUOTE ]
In a perfect world, we would have perfect inormation at all times. In the real world, sometimes we have to act on the best information available. If Sadaam had in fact had WMD, and intended to supply them to terrorists, or use them himself, not going to war could have been the most dangerous alternative. That said, I don't think that's what we did. I think Bush acted with a preconception that Iraq had WMD, and wasn't interested in any information that didn't support that preconception.

[ QUOTE ]
I mean, really, the magnitude of the incorrect information (assuming there was no intent to mislead the public) is staggering. This bothers me a great deal.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, and I don't think it can be blamed entirely on Bush. It seems that there was an intelligence failure, which was exacerbated by Bush's unwillingness to consider the possibility that there were no WMD. I also believe that Sadaam went to a lot of trouble to make it appear that he did have WMD, even thou he didn't have them. I really don't understand why he did this.

[Roybert]

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I also believe that Sadaam went to a lot of trouble to make it appear that he did have WMD, even thou he didn't have them. I really don't understand why he did this.

[/ QUOTE ]

He did it, in my opinion, for one very simple reason. Saddam was not a very popular figure in the region, and if anyone else knew that he definitely did not have WMD he feared that he would've been overthrown (either by an invading force, coup d'etat or popular rebellion) immediately. So, he kept up appearances to try and look as scary as we knew he was in 1988.

Sorry - not trying to hijack a thread or express any of my views ... just trying to propose a possible explanation for Saddam's obviously confusing behavior concerning WMD before the US invasion.

[TransientR]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Alright, so this is a ridiculous list full mostly of conspiracy theories. But none of the reactionaries on this board can refute the fact that Bush and his administration actively lied to the American people and led them into a war on what they knew to be false pretenses and in direct violation of international law. As such, he should be tried as a war criminal and sent to prison for life.

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you prove a negative? There is nothing to indicate the Bush administration lied. Just because you and the rest of the tinfoil hat brigade scream it loudly doesnt make it so.

[/ QUOTE ]

Geez...

Cheney lies so regularly and with such gall, I almost admire him, like many admire Satan. A recent example, after a month of unprecedented deadly attacks by the insurgency in Iraq, Cheney goes on Larry King and calmly explains: "The insurgency is in the last throes."

Now, you may say Cheney, Bush et. al. aren't liars. But if they aren't they have been proven wrong again-and-again, and the reigns should have been removed from their error-prone hands.

So they are either liars, or mistaken too often to be trusted with power.

Frank