The Smoking Gun Memo, the Pretext for War and the "Liberal Press"

[player24]

We invaded Iraq to get the Iraqi military out of Kuwait - not because of 9-11. Happy?

Iraq violated the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire by refusing to accomodate weapons inspectors and honor the no fly zone. In a pre-9-11 world, we might have tolerated (contained) Iraq. But, because of the rising threat of radical Islamic terrorism, it was prudent (and correct) to pre-empt the most dangerous threats (WMD). In the process, we have sent a message of deterrence to the rest of the nuts who want to kill innocent people in the name of religion.

Personally, I want the radical Islamic terrorists to die in their own countries...not in downtown Manhattan. You have a right to disagree. (And/or you can continue to pretend that those who disagree with you are being duped because they are not capable of your superior level of understanding.)

[kurto]

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Iraq violated the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire by refusing to accomodate weapons inspectors and honor the no fly zone. In a pre-9-11 world, we might have tolerated (contained) Iraq. But, because of the rising threat of radical Islamic terrorism, it was prudent (and correct) to pre-empt the most dangerous threats (WMD).

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All evidence leads one to conclude this is wrong.

"Iraq violated the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire by refusing to accomodate weapons inspectors and honor the no fly zone." The inspectors were granted full access many months before Bush went to war. Pretty much the entire world except for Bush was satisfied with the results of the Weapons Inspectors.

"But, because of the rising threat of radical Islamic terrorism, it was prudent (and correct) to pre-empt the most dangerous threats (WMD)" This is wrong on multiple levels. The most obvious is that Saddam Hussein/Iraq was not an Islamic state. On the contrary, the Islamics considered Saddam an enemy. So, if 'danger from the nation of Islam' is your motivation, then Iraq is the wrong country.

Furthermore, there was no threat of WMD. Prior to Bush's warmongering, Colin Powell gave a speech in Europe where he said that Saddam, due to the earlier wars and their containment, was NO THREAT to the world. Condeleeza Rice also said as much. Then, you had the Bush administration pushing dispelled intel (Aluminum Tubes, the Chemical trucks, the fleet of planes (ie- 2 balsa wood glider) ready to launch a chemical war, etc.) and IGNORING our own intelligence agencies which all seemed to concur that he was not a threat. Now, we have the memo from London where PRIOR to the war, they show that Bush had decided to go to war and would FIX THE EVIDENCE to support their cause.

It still boggles my mind the people who defend Bush when he changed his justifications repeatedly about why he wanted to go there, everything he said and predicted was wrong, multiple evidence (including PNAC's writings, the British memo, etc.) show that they planned to goto Iraq and would lie to get there... There is overwhelming evidence that Bush had his own agenda and would lie, fabricate evidence, whatever to get what he wants.

All the reasons you cite for going to war were things that Bush said, but they were all irrelevent. It doesn't even matter if they make sense. As long as he got his followers on board.

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In the process, we have sent a message of deterrence to the rest of the nuts who want to kill innocent people in the name of religion.


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Last I read, terrorism recruitment has been up. The US has the worst image International then perhaps ever before. We are involved with more strife and have created more enemies then before while simultaneously losing the trust of many of our oldest allies.

I'm not sure if that's the message we intended.

[player24]

We apparently agree for the reasons why the US went to war against Iraq - to get the Iraqi military out of Kuwait.

But why do you think the US and the UK decided to break the Gulf War ceasefire? I know you don't believe it has anything to do with terrorism or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. So I assume we are back to the tired old contentions that we wanted to help Haliburton?

In other words - let's assume President Bush lied in order to get political support to invade Iraq. Why did he want to invade Iraq? I know you believe Bush is stupid and dishonest - Is he also an evil imperialist?

[kurto]

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But why do you think the US and the UK decided to break the Gulf War ceasefire?

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The UK didn't decide. The US did. As I said, the evidence shows that Bush was going to do it (his people wanted to go in for a variety of reasons they wrong about in their PNAC writings) and Blair had to decide whether or not to play along. I'm sure you've heard that Blair receives criticism for being a lapdog to the US. I believe Blair went along because he thought it better to side with the US for the WRONG reasons then to take on their biggest ally.

In PNAC, they listed a variety of reasons to go to Iraq; oil (more specifically, to reduce the reliance we had with Saudi Arabia), to get a foothold in the middle east,... they essentially wrote that as the sole surviving superpower, we should flex our muscles. Re: Oil... you may recall that prior to going in, the Bush Administration had closed door meeting with the oil companies where they exchanged Oil Maps of Iraq. Suspicious? Apparently not to Bushies. lol

They also wrote that what they wanted would never fly with the public. They wrote that the ONLY way they could ever sell this is if there was a disaster in the US equivalent to a Pearl Harbor.

Which is why, as someone else quoted, after 9/11 they said 'we're going into Iraq REGARDLESS of whether or not they were involved.' Immediately George Bush started tying 9/11 into Iraq. (and then 12 months later, you have half the nation incorrectly believing that the hijackers were from Iraq.)

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So I assume we are back to the tired old contentions that we wanted to help Haliburton?


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I don't know anyone who thought it was all about Halliburton. Though I'm certain before they went in, they (they, meaning Bush and Halliburton) already knew they were going to profit from whatever action the US took.

"In other words - let's assume President Bush lied in order to get political support to invade Iraq. Why did he want to invade Iraq? I know you believe Bush is stupid and dishonest - Is he also an evil imperialist?"

As I said, PNAC (made up of the Bush family and all the people in his admin, cheney, Wolfowitz, etc.) all wrote about why they wanted to invade Iraq BEFORE Bush was ever in office. You act as if liberals are just making up stuff. They WROTE about what they wanted to do. Then, when they do it, you ask 'why?' I suggest you do some reading on what they wrote years ago. They'll tell you themselves.

[jokerswild]

He thinks the people are so stupid that his Fuhrer can tell them anything and they will follow blindly.

[Chris Alger]

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"We (most everyone) believed that Sadaam had or was developing WMD and that he would not hesitate to transfer said weapons to terrorists."

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This claim is simply false. Outside the U.S., and beyond the reach of the propaganda machine, virtually no national population agreed that Saddam was a threat to anyone outside Iraq. A Gallup poll of some 38 countries, for example, couldn't find a single one where a majority supported a U.S. war against Iraq.

Your claim that Saddam "wouldn't hesitate" to give WMD's to terrorists after at least two decades of undisputed failure to do that very thing is something less than an assertion of fact and something more than evidence of delusional insanity. (Recall the Duelfer Report's conclusion that "no evidence" existed of any intent by Saddam to transfer WMD to terrorists).

[MMMMMM]

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"We (most everyone) believed that Sadaam had or was developing WMD and that he would not hesitate to transfer said weapons to terrorists."


This claim is simply false. Outside the U.S., and beyond the reach of the propaganda machine, virtually no national population agreed that Saddam was a threat to anyone outside Iraq. A Gallup poll of some 38 countries, for example, couldn't find a single one where a majority supported a U.S. war against Iraq.

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Er, Chris, are we talking about what populations believed, or what governments believed? Many governments believed that Saddam possessed or was developing WMD's.

[Chris Alger]

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Many governments believed that Saddam possessed or was developing WMD's.

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I doubt that a single government, including those of the U.S., the UK or Israel, believed on the eve of invasion that Iraq posed any WMD threat to anyone. There were probably assumptions that if one looked hard enough, some quantity of mustard gas or growth medium might be found, but no government believed that these were threatening WMD, that Saddam was capable of using against any other country or even "his own people," or had the slightest inclination to risk suicide by surrendering them to terrorists. I'm not aware of any intelligence assessment by any country that Iraq possessed WMD after the inspectors were given unrestricted access to the sites the U.S. claimed were harboring them. These claims of near consensus by the international community are whole-cloth lies that receive wide circulation because they widen responsibility and support the official line that the WMD debacle was just screw-up, a well intentioned mistake.

In fact, I suspect that virtually everyone in Congress (including staffers) and all Washington journalists had the same impression, something that Anthony Zinni pointed out on 60 minutes recently. You can see this in the perceptible shift in media coverage from (1) reporting specific administration claims to (2) reporting generalized assumptions about WMD as the specifics were being undermined, to (3) reporting that Bush is really a human rights crusader with a "messianic vision" to build nations and democratize the world, the importance of WMD claims declining as their credibility evaporated.

There's a lot of evidence for this that I've detailed before and won't reiterate. This includes the creation of the White House Office of Special Plans in August 2002 to bypass normal intelligence channels and conduct "media strategy," which included outlandish claims by Doug Feith that received wide circulation in the right-wing press (without mention of their debunking by the CIA, FBI and other administration sources via Congressional testimony and correspondence). It also includes the creation of a similar group in Sharon's office to bypass Mossad, which coordinated its efforts with Feith, and the allegation of Blair's own foreign secretary that Blair privately admitted weeks before the invasion that Iraq probably didn't have any WMD, or the Hutton report's generous conclusion that Blair thought the problem was more "latent" than imminent, contrary to his public scaremongering.

The claim about "many" governments believing in Iraqi WMD probably originated with statements like: "every Western intelligence agency with a presence in the Middle East" (tacitly limiting this to the U.S., the UK and Israel) believed that Saddam had WMD. The phrase then got shortened to "every" country and agency, or "most" or "many" of them. It's all made-up.

Take Israel, for example, whose leaders produced an endless stream of Saddam horror scenarios. "[A] study produced by Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies indicates that Israel's vaunted intelligence services could find no indication that Iraq possessed banned weapons, despite their location and access to Middle East sources. 'On the eve of war,' said the report, 'Israeli intelligence on Iraqi capabilities resembled its counterparts in the United States and other Western countries. It had not received any information regarding weapons of mass destruction and surface-to-surface missiles for nearly eight years." J. Bamford, "A Pretext for War," p. 309.

Another source for these claims are foreign intelligence that the providing country didn't take seriously, like the forged Niger documents we got from Italy or the "curveball" disclosures from Germany.

[nicky g]

"Iraq violated the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire by refusing to accomodate weapons inspectors and honor the no fly zone. "

The no-fly zones were not part of the ceasefire agreement ; this is just another excuse for the war dreamed up by embarassed war supporters trying to justify their decision in the light of the absence of WMD.

Regarding the refusal to accomodate weapons inspectors, immediately prior to the war the inspecotrs were in Iraq, broadly happy with the access and cooperation they were being given, searching the sites US and UK intelligence had indicated were WMD storage sites, reporting back to the UN on their progress, asking to be allowed to finish their job, and pointing out that there was no real evidence that Iraq possessed any WMD.

[trippin bily]

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However, are we to believe that the same media outlets that went ballistic over a stupid national guard memo decided to take a pass on this story? Doesnt add up

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You really think this is unusual?

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yes ! This is unusual.
The numerous US papers and democrats have been screaming for years that bush lied.
Suddenly the ( alleged) proof is here and all of them are silent ???
Me thinks me smells a rat.
A question to ask is why they are all ignoring the memo.
This is like christmas in may if you hate bush andbelieve this memo.
As weak as the standards for proof of many US news organizations re... this story they ignore.
Something stinks.