A New Downing Street Memo

The British government memo on Iraq, reported in today's New York Times, is perhaps even more important than the Downing Street memo. The five-page memo--of a January 31, 2003 Oval Office meeting between Bush, Blair and six of their top advisers--reveals the Bush Administration's fierce determination to invade Iraq even without a second UN resolution, and even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons. Indeed, confronted with the possibility of not finding any weapons before the planned invasion, Bush talks of ways to provoke a confrontation with Iraq, including, the Times reports, "a proposal to paint a US surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein."

Reminiscent of the Downing Street Memo's famous line, David Manning, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser at the time, writes, "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning,"

Bush's mendacity in taking America into this illegal, unprovoked catastrophe is already well known. But it's still horrifying--especially on a day when the US Ambassador to Iraq states that "More Iraqis are dying from the militia violence than from the terrorists"--to read Bush's arrogantly ignorant prediction that it is "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." (For the record, the British memo shows Blair agreed with Bush's assessment.)

Today, American troops are an occupying force, inside a civil war, inside a militia struggle.

It is time to get US forces out of this untenable position.

Fortunately, with virtually no political leadership, there is, as today's New York Times article reports a "deepening and hardening opposition to the war."

Effective, smart pressure--in the streets, at the ballot box this November, and beyond--must be brought to bear so that our 'leaders" in Washington listen to this growing, broad-based opposition.

Comments (53)

1. Poor W! We give him so much crap for lacking intelligence and then we get to peer into his creative imagination. We forget sometimes that he WAS in the military as a pilot, that he does have a vast wealth of experience on which to draw. So maybe the "paint a plane like a UN plane" plan sounds silly in hindsight, but who knows? Maybe it woulda worked. Certainly no worse than any other plan that has been followed.

   I think I'm giving up my current career just so I can become an established presidential historian. I can think of nothing so entertaining (and disheartening) as to spend my career performing a detailed analysis of all the decisions and words of this administration.

   Posted by tjbehrens1 at 03/27/2006 @ 12:49pm

2. And yet all but three of the Senate Democrats think that a censure resolution is too much!

   Yes, we'll invade countries on a whim, bankrupting our children's future then out CIA spys and spy on our own citizenry, add signing statements to virtually every bill that doesn't grant god like status to the President.

   Yet according to the Senate Republican's a censure resolution is too extreme!

   Posted by freedomplease at 03/27/2006 @ 1:28pm

3. The U.S. Constitution burns while Congress fiddles.

   Posted by oraibi1952 at 03/27/2006 @ 1:54pm

4. This is yet another smoking gun regarding the deliberate manipulation of the American public into supporting this war for the Corporations. Too bad it will not be enough to wake the people from their slumber and rise up. The sheep are too comfortable.

   Posted by bjkron at 03/27/2006 @ 2:00pm

5. Well, what else is new? I wonder what kind of spin Bush supporters will use to defend our dear president this time. Man, honest discourse is such a rare commodity/virtue these days.

   Posted by k330k at 03/27/2006 @ 2:18pm

6. "According to Cities for Progress, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), the money spent on operations in Iraq could have been used to build 2.7 million affordable housing units, provide 60 million higher education scholarships and 40 million Head Start slots for one year."

   But why do that? That would make America not only a better country but, absent the policy of doing everything in our power to create new enemies, a safer country. No benefit in that for the domestic and foreign special interest elite. Chaos, war, and a hated America is their meal ticket.

   Posted by fromredbird at 03/27/2006 @ 2:29pm

7. Yawn...old news. The Guardian did a report on this nearly two months ago. All this shows is that the US and UK knew that Saddam would not cooperate with the UN or voluntarily disarm or step aside. Bush/Blair were right and prepared for war.

   Posted by woodyee at 03/27/2006 @ 2:32pm

8. Republican candidate pool is getting thinner as constituency shrinks:

   Local Republicans are facing what many consider an embarrassing choice between two perennial candidates in the race for the Republican nomination for Congress in the 3rd Congressional district which includes Riverside, North Riverside and Brookfield.

   The two candidates are Art Jones, an insurance broker with past ties to white supremacist organizations and Ray Wardingley, who used to perform as Spanky the Clown.

   http://tinyurl.com/pnmwu

   Posted by fromredbird at 03/27/2006 @ 2:34pm

9. Please stop beating up on George Bush! He never wanted to go to war, Saddam Hussein attacked us on 911, and he was getting ready to attack the United States with chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons. Iraq is a Democracy now, and we are winning - it will probably get worse before it gets better - but thats because we are winning.

   Posted by jchrist at 03/27/2006 @ 2:40pm

10. Why doesnt the media ever tell the GOOD news about Iraq? Why doesnt the media ever report when George Bush tells the truth?

    Posted by jchrist at 03/27/2006 @ 2:42pm

11. Wow, what a choice, REDBIRD. I just hope that both candidates have their constituents' best interests at heart. Well, atleast SPANKY will garner the youth vote.:)

    Posted by k330k at 03/27/2006 @ 2:42pm

12. I guess if he told the truth more times than not then it would be reported. Either that or this "liberal" media has it in for Bush(hah, what liberal media).

    Posted by k330k at 03/27/2006 @ 2:43pm

13. KVH

    "a proposal to paint a US surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein."

    Didnt we go thru this argument already? A surveillence plan flies at high altitude, what impact would painting it have? Answer NONE!!

    For any course of action to be implemented it must be feasible and suitable. Painting a plane, of ANY air force type plane would have no impact. It is laughable to even suggest it, but by all means do, everytime you speak on this matter and put forth crazy notions such as those you just did, then it more and more makes you guys look farther out in left space.

    Now in reference to the assasination of SADDAM, are you saying that attempted killing of ones head of state is an act of war?

    It appears so, since the mock outrage you declare in your article seems so sincere at the very thought that this might have been even considered.

    But in so doing you paint yourself into a corner, because here is where it gets interesting, SADDAM definitely tried to kill G.HW Bush, and Clinton believed it so much that he retaliated, so in that instance you are forced to admit a state of war was already in effect between us and SADDAM, making the invasion of IRAQ totally justified in your eyes. I am glad we can finally agree.

    I love the LEFT. God Bless

    Posted by CPT at 03/27/2006 @ 2:48pm

14. All this shows is that the US and UK knew that Saddam would not cooperate with the UN or voluntarily disarm or step aside. Bush/Blair were right and prepared for war.

    Posted by WOODYEE 03/27/2006 @ 2:32pm | ignore this person

    It shows nothing of the kind. The article explicitly stated "that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons". This is why he brought up the scheme to disguise a US plane as a UN one, because he wanted an invasion regardless of if there was any evidence that Hussein had WMD (which, I remind you, he didn't).

    Posted by brunowe at 03/27/2006 @ 2:49pm

15. Woodyee,

    You're right it's all old news. It sure as hell doesn't matter that we were lied into the war. It doesn't matter that we planned this war from before 9/11 and were still completey and utterly unprepared, yet our boy Rumsfeld is "doing a heck of a job".

    Posted by freedomplease at 03/27/2006 @ 2:50pm

16. CPT

    "a proposal to paint a US surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein."

    Didnt we go thru this argument already? A surveillence plan flies at high altitude, what impact would painting it have? Answer NONE!!

    For any course of action to be implemented it must be feasible and suitable. Painting a plane, of ANY air force type plane would have no impact. It is laughable to even suggest it, but by all means do, everytime you speak on this matter and put forth crazy notions such as those you just did, then it more and more makes you guys look farther out in left space.

    Remember, this was Bush's idea, so you characterization of it only applies to your lord and master. The point of mentioning it is that it shows how desperate Bush was to go to war regardless of the facts.

    Secondly, if the assassination attempt against Bush I was such a justification (and I think your "definitely" is a bit much, as confessions obtained by the Kuwait govt. have to be taken with a grain of salt), then why all the hype about WMD and al-Qaida? Maybe because no one would ever support a war based on a ten-year old assassination attempt and the fact that you have to go to that further illustrates the logical fragility of your position.

    Posted by brunowe at 03/27/2006 @ 2:56pm

17. By the time Bush met Blair at the White House, Hans Blix had reported that the Iraqis would not cooperate with the inspections, only paying lip service to the inspectors. We know that Saddam remained confident that his bribery of France and Russia (as well as their well-known economic interest in maintaining their contracts with the Saddam regime) would result in a stalemate at the Security Council over any resolution opening military force as a consequence of failure.

    Posted by woodyee at 03/27/2006 @ 2:58pm

18. BRUNOWE

    The logical frailty lies, in a FALSE report that is now being reported on, by of all publications, the Nations, for the very reasons i mentioned above.

    Your side is forced to stoop, to ridiculous assertions.

    Your reliance on the "reports" truthfulness, buttresses your own feeble arguments against Bush. They are fun though to point out.

    The memo is most likley tripe, made out be some low-level staffer who no doubt, put his own spin into what he suppossedly heard. But continue to rely on that lone gunmen theory, the one who is on the inside and knows all on what is really going on and why.

    Painting planes??? Bah! silly,

    No former pilot, like Bush, would put forth such a silly idea, but continue to believe that it came from him if you wish

    Posted by CPT at 03/27/2006 @ 3:06pm

19. WOODYEE

    Hans Blix had also indicated that, although there were areas that required further investigation, that UNMOVIC had no problems with access, ending his address in January 2003 with "...we now have an inspection apparatus that permits us to send multiple inspections teams every day all over Iraq by road or by air. Let me end by simply noting that that capability, which has been built up in a short time and which is now operating, is at the disposal of the Security Council." http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/27/sprj.irq.transcript.blix/

    Blix himself said on McNeil/Lehrer in March 2004, "Well, they certainly advanced weapons of mass destruction as the decisive reason for going to war, and I think the evidence was rather weak at the time. We had heard in the autumn of 2002 that the alleged aluminum tubes, for instance, which were thought, alleged to be for making the centrifuges, were probably more likely to be for making a rocket. And in January 2003, we had performed quite a lot of inspections to sites which were given by intelligence and they had not shown any weapons of mass destruction, so we began to be doubtful.

    And among the 700 inspections that we performed, none brought us any evidence of weapons of mass destruction" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june04/blix_3-17.html

    In short, despite Iraqi foot dragging, his inspectors could go where they needed to go and found nothing. Clearly, Bush didn't give a damn about whether there were WMDs or not, he just wanted a pretext.

    Posted by brunowe at 03/27/2006 @ 3:11pm

20. CPT

    The fact that it was a statement given off the top-of-the-head rather than a considered plan makes it quite believable, after all, Bush would never say anything stupid or ill-considered, right? Further, it was the NYTimes, not The Nation, that broke the story. The article there stated that "[t]wo senior British officials confirmed the authenticity of the memo, but declined to talk further about it, citing Britain's Official Secrets Act, which made it illegal to divulge classified information."

    And it's not a lone gunmen theory, one of the first things Bush did after 9-11 was ask if it could be tied to Iraq. There were administrations staffers who thought that going in and taking out Hussein would be good policy in and of itself. Finally, this administration wasn't above easily disprovable lies. Remember Rice's statement about how the centrifuges could ONLY be used for enrichment, or Cheney's about we knew where the WMDs were?

    Posted by brunowe at 03/27/2006 @ 3:23pm

21. BRUNOWE

    It was ALL about SADDAM, getting SADDAM, WMD??????? Who cares about WMD, UNLESS the man in charge is likely to use them.

    Given SADDAMs' track record???? Invasion, the proper and right thing to do.

    If we live on a street and you have a gun, i dont care, you are not likely to use it carelessly, if down the street a Charles Manson type has a gun, well there is going to be a problem. Isnt there?

    You guys on the left have to stop getting "stuck on stupid." It was all about SADDAM.

    Posted by CPT at 03/27/2006 @ 3:27pm

22. CPT

    The only problem is that he didn't have WMD and there was no evidence that he did. You can't really raise the "likely to use them" argument if he doesn't have them in the first place. That pretty much why you have to care about WMD.

    As to the U-2 argument, the idea wouldn't rest Iraq somehow being able to tell UN colors from US colors on a high-flying plane. There had been a dispute between Iraq and UNMOVIC regarding the latter using U-2 flights. The "logic" of the idea would be that if Iraq shot down a U-2, the existence of the dispute would be used to argue that Iraq deliberate shot down a plane they "knew" had to be a UNMOVIC plane.

    Posted by brunowe at 03/27/2006 @ 3:32pm

23. Bruno

    Much like Condi on MTP yesterday saying that everyone thought he had WMDs and we had intel indications that he did not.... Gotta love it when a politician argues both sides of a fact simultaneously. Then they're always right!

    Posted by leftofcenter at 03/27/2006 @ 3:38pm

24. CPT,

    Your 3:27PM post might be the first glimmer of actual integrity I've seen from you.

    Now if only we could have a leadership that could have admitted what you have just admitted and if only they could have done this prior to invading Iraq. We as a country could then have had a debate on whether or not we were prepared to invade based on that criteria. We might have still done so and, if we had, there would still be popular support for the current embroglio.

    But instead we were taken to Iraq based on a false argument of imminent threat via saddam's assosciation with terrorists and his possession of WMD's and WMD making capacity.

    It is precisely because there were no WMD's and no terrorist links (of any threat to the USA), that the support for the War has eroded.

    Look, the American people don't like being lied to and whether or not apologist's like you still spin that he didn't "lie" doesn't mean that American's havn't already made up their minds that he DID lie.

    Posted by freedomplease at 03/27/2006 @ 3:40pm

25. CPT,

    Oh and we did have this argument with the plane painting because the British press have been talking about this memo for a several weeks.

    The NY Times have been authenticating the documents since that time and are now apparently satisfied that, yes, ex pilot GW Botch is so silly as to suggest painting a plane in UN colors and hope that it gets shot down by the.....unrestrained madness of despotic Sadam????!!!!

    Posted by freedomplease at 03/27/2006 @ 3:54pm

26. Your side is forced to stoop, to ridiculous assertions.

    Hello, pot? This is the kettle.

    Posted by tjbehrens1 at 03/27/2006 @ 3:57pm

27. More evidence of impeachable offenses and war crimes

    The latest revelations in The New York Times (actually reported in the British press last month) of Bush and Blair's scheming to go to war against Iraq regardless of facts or authorization from the United Nations is only further evidence that the invasion had nothing to do with what they claimed and that they knew the evidence against Saddam was weak and deliberately lied to make it sound certain.

    Last year I got into a debate with some conservative posters at the website of The Nation. My contention is that the Downing Street Memo's "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" meant facts were being fabricated; the Bushbots argued that "fixed" meant that facts (presumably real ones, even if erroneous) were simply being used to document a case for war.

    My argument was (and continues to be) that a well informed person had reason prior to the actual invasion to challenge and reject the junta's case for war against Saddam. Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector, asserted that 95% of Saddam's weapons were destroyed when the inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 and that any biological agents Saddam had left for making weapons would have expired by the time the Bush regime began beating the drums of war in the Autumn of 2002. There was the evidence that General Hussein Kamel, then chief of Iraq's chemical weapons production, ordered all chemical weapons destroyed shortly after the end of the Gulf War in 1991. He certainly told the United Nations inspectors that.

    There was reason to believe that Saddam had little or nothing. The Bushbots argued by attacking the credibility of Major Ritter and General Kamel. However, UN inspectors in Iraq prior to Bush's invasion found nothing. That is best explained by the obvious fact that there was nothing for them to find. Of course, Bush's defenders would counter that claims that Saddam was cleverly hiding the weapons was a genuine concern and not just noise, but every attempt they made to direct the inspectors where to look turned out to be bogus information.

    The undeniable fact is that Major Ritter was correct and General Kamel told the UN inspectors the truth. By the time in question, Bush was demanding that Saddam disarm, yet Saddam had long before disarmed.

    The Downing Street Memo tells us that the case against Saddam was "weak". Even the neocons knew this. Yet General Powell went before the United Nations Security Council and told them and us exactly how much of what chemical agents Saddam had, and Mr. Rumsfeld publicly stated exactly where they were. It should be plain by now that neither statement had any basis in fact. At best, the evidence against Saddam was inconclusive and did not warrant such strong and clear statements of fact from General Powell, Mr. Rumsfeld and others in the US regime.

    The latest memo, according to The Times, confirms that Bush and Blair were aware of the weakness of their case: "The memo . . . shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq."

    If there was no evidence of weapons, then what was their case for war? It was based demanding Saddam prove a negative -- something akin to defying the law of gravity -- and at best some hunches based on inclusive evidence.

    Bush's defenders also resort to their tired tactic of blaming Clinton: "But Clinton thought Saddam had weapons, so he was lying, too." Horsepucky. There are two things wrong with that appeal. First of all, Clinton may have thought Saddam had weapons, but he never said he knew it for a fact and didn't go to war saying he knew it for a fact; in that, Bush lied and Clinton did not. Second, Clinton left office on January 20, 2001 and the invasion did not begin until March 18, 2003. What were the Bushies doing all that time? Was there nothing new to confirm that Saddam had weapons? If so, why didn't they share it with the world? If not, why did they make the case against Saddam sound more certain than it was?

    Obviously, they had no such evidence. They knew they didn't and lied when they said they did.

    Another reason to believe that members of the Bush regime were lying is that were acting like liars. Even though Major Ritter came forward and was willing to testify that Saddam had little in 1998 and even less by late 2002, he was ignored. Suggestions that he was taking money from Saddam were even made. The regime would even resorted to character assassination and Ritter found himself answering questions about stories about his being a pedophile; whether those stories were well founded or not is a red herring in any discussion of whether Ritter was an authority on what Saddam had in the way of biochemical weapons. When Saddam realized that UNSC Resolution 1441 put him in a tight corner, he invited inspectors back to Iraq. The Bush regime's informal Ministry of Truth wasted no time in attempted to undermine the revised inspections. Rather than tell the inspectors where the goods could be found (remember, they "knew" where they were), the regime put its efforts into questioning the integrity or competence of the inspectors and claiming that if they found nothing it was because Saddam was so good at hiding them. It may have been impossible for Saddam to prove he had no weapons, but the last thing the war mongers in the Bush regime wanted was for a thorough search to be made of Iraq for those weapons and find little or nothing. It was not in Mr. Bush's interest to wait for the inspectors to complete their task, and he didn't.

    The pattern of character assassination, used against Major Ritter and the UN inspectors, continued after the invasion was a fait accompli. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson came forward in a piece for The New York Times to show how Mr. Bush used erroneous information in his 2003 State of the Union about Saddam's alleged attempts to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger, we suddenly found out that Mrs. Wilson worked for the CIA and were told she may have arranged for his fact finding mission in 2002 ("nepotism"). The charges of nepotism ignored the fact that Wilson, a former acting Ambassador to Iraq and a recognized expert on the African uranium industry, was one of the best qualified people available for the job. The assertion that "The President is right and Ambassador Wilson wrong" is simply false. The document that purported to show that Saddam was looking to buy yellowcake from Niger turned out to be a forgery; Ambassador Wilson reported that there was no evidence of an attempt by Saddam to buy yellowcake from Niger and that even if he tried, he probably couldn't get his hands on it, any way. That was Wilson's conclusion and it was also what the US Ambassador to Niger had earlier concluded.

    The Wilson affair reveals how far the regime's Ministry of Truth is willing to go over so little. After all, Ambassador Wilson did not completely undermine the Bush's pre-war case against Iraq. He only showed that a sentence in Mr. Bush put in his 2003 SOTU was incorrect and that people in the White House should have know that it was. However, Wilson's story doesn't present a problem to the regime because Bush said Saddam was attempting to buy yellowcake when he should have known that there was nothing to support the assertion. If that was the only problem with the regime's case for war, who would care? Even if an erroneous statement found its way into the SOTU, who would care? If US soldiers had marched up the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and found Iraq awash in weapons-grad chemicals and biological agents and archives full of documentation of the Iraqi government supplying al Qaida, who would have cared about Mr. Bush talking about one little uranium deal in the SOTU that turned out to have never happened? Would Wilson have even bothered to write his piece for The Times? It would have been forgotten as fast as it was read.

    The problem that members of the regime had with Wilson's story is not that it showed that they got something wrong, but it focused attention on how they managed to get everything wrong. Broadly speaking, there is not one pre-war assertion by the Bush regime or the Blair government about Saddam's weapons or his ties to al Qaida or other international terrorists that has panned out. That is even more remarkable than if they had managed to get everything right. Wilson's story shows that at best, Bush and his aides were not concerned about the facts. Rather, they were busy fixing facts to the policy, whether they knew they were real facts or not.

    And "fixed" in this case means "fabricated." They either knew the statements were false or that they were not based on inconvertible evidence. When they said they knew, they didn't. They lied.

    It was not lost on me that the Bush apologists at The Nation, while making feeble attempts to refute my arguments, did not address the evidence of the very existence of the Office of Special Plans. Long before Seymour Hersh detailed the OSP's operations in the New Yorker (May 2003, just after Saddam's fall from power), it was reported in the British press. I first learned of it in an article by Julian Borger in The Guardian in October 2002. Again, if members of the Bush regime had any confidence in the case they were making, they wouldn't have tasked Doug Feith to cherry pick intelligence reports or edit ambiguous language out of them. The existence of the OSP and the systematic politicization of intelligence was, for me, the single greatest piece of evidence prior to the war that the case against Iraq was not based on facts. This is how liars behave, not honest men.

    When I marched against the war prior to its initiation, I did so as an informed citizen. Today, when I call for the impeachment of Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other members of the regime and their indictment and trial for war crimes, I do that also as an informed citizen. Bush and his aides, with their silly unitary executive theory, are guilty of many betrayals of American democratic principles. However, there can be no greater betrayal of a democratic state than when the commander-in-chief lies to the citizens about his reasons for going to war.

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 03/27/2006 @ 4:11pm

28. George Bushs Iraq: Death Squads, Torture, Corruption

    Posted by jchrist at 03/27/2006 @ 4:17pm

29. CPT and the usual visceral school of detective work. If a Charles Manson type has a gun. Who would know what a Charles Manson "type" looks like? There are a lot of kooks who have guns in this country, and a good many of them look like John Wayne "types", so clearly it's not going to be hard to commit mayhem on CPT's block. What "types" were those kids in Colorado a a few years ago? But then, CPT said a while back that he doesn't mind being searched since he "resembles" a certain Middle Eastern profile. Isn't it grand when people are willing to dismiss their own rights, and everyone else's, on the basis of "types"? And guys like CPT wonder why we don't accept his assessment of events in Iraq. It's clear he possesses no discriminating sense whatsoever.

    Posted by redwingblack at 03/27/2006 @ 4:25pm

30. Jack Rabbit,

    Extremely cogent and well written piece. Thanks for your effort.

    Unfortunately in Republican dominated politics "the buck does not stop at the President".

    Posted by freedomplease at 03/27/2006 @ 4:29pm

31. great post jack rabbit!!

    i heard al sharpton speak on the radio. he said to the colorado crowd, (not exact words) if i yelled that you were all in imminent danger--get out! and you all went running out of the building. then u asked me what the imminent danger was and i said ah nothing, don't worry about it. u needed the fresh air anyway. that would be wrong. don't lie us into war and then say, it was a good thing anyway!

    fixed=fabricated

    Posted by loveloki at 03/27/2006 @ 4:32pm

32. Jack Rabbit,

    I concur, well done.

    Posted by brunowe at 03/27/2006 @ 4:33pm

33. CPT:

    You are going all over the place on this, but one point:

    The document is "a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser."

    Not written some low-level flunky.

    Posted by Hman23 at 03/27/2006 @ 4:49pm

34. JACK RABBIT:

    Great post. I have missed your writings and am glad to see them again.

    Posted by Hman23 at 03/27/2006 @ 4:56pm

35. "CPT said a while back that he doesn't mind being searched since he "resembles" a certain Middle Eastern profile"

    I thought that was OKSPORTSGUY - aka Todd.

    Posted by LClaire at 03/27/2006 @ 5:04pm

36. Hman23:

    This [journals.democraticunderground.com] is for you.

    To others:

    Thank you for the kind words.

    To LClaire:

    The point Bush's supporters miss is that it doesn't matter if they mind if federal agents inspect their personal space or not. It matters that it is done legally, with a warrant.

    It bothers me that the tyrant in the Oval Office is claiming the authority to do what King George did when we ran his red coats out of the colonies.

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 03/27/2006 @ 5:29pm

37. JackRabbit:

    Is that the same General Kamil that was caught ON TAPE making the following statements in 1995 (after 1991):

    One exchange in 1995 between Hussein Kamil and Saddam discussed concealing weapons from inspectors. He stated "We did not reveal all that we have. They didn't know the extent of our work on missiles." When discussing the info turned over to the UN, Kamil states "Not the types of weapons, not the volume of materials we imported, not the volume of production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct. They didn't know any of this."

    Which Kamil do we believe?

    Posted by usc1 at 03/27/2006 @ 5:57pm

38. Jackrabbit,

    The other point that Bush-types miss (e.g., those who say they don't mind being poked and probed without a warrant because they haven't done anything wrong) is the fact that the government is the one who has legal authority to bring forth criminal charges; not the individual citizen.

    And, a government of the Busk-ilk can categorize and have categorized actions as being illegal or legal based on what may fit their political objective.

    Posted by oraibi1952 at 03/27/2006 @ 6:02pm

39. To USC1:

    Possibly. General Kamel was also Saddam's son-in-law. He defected to the west and mad statements to UN inspectors. These statements [middleeastreference.org.uk] were secret at the time.

    When he returned to Iraq, he was murdered "by a family member." I can believe that. Your ideas about which family member and mine are probably the same.

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 03/27/2006 @ 6:06pm

40. To Oraibi1952:

    What suprises me about "conservatives" nowadays is how trusting they are of government power. We have a Bill of Rights precisely to keep people like your favorite Frat Boy and mine from exercising arbitrary power.

    I wouldn't trust any President with the authority to wire tap without a warrant or torture a combat detainee or some of the other "authorities" the Frat Boy claims for himself. It goes without saying that I trust him least of all.

    Distrust of government power used to be one of the more admirable traits of a political conservative. I guess we need to call Bush and his apologists something else, like right wing morons or fascists.

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 03/27/2006 @ 6:17pm

41. "Sometimes we can predict the future if someone just wants to believe it."

    -----------------------------------------------------------

    IRAQ – the Votes, the Tally, the War:

    "The Inevitable"

    The Bush Administration keeps stating that "we" cannot leave Iraq: until the votes for democracy are complete; until Iraqis establish a democratic government, until Iraqi forces can protect their citizens, not until...

    Well, not until we realize The Inevitable will the true Iraqi solution come forth. It's the obvious one, the one that Iraqis are in the midst of forming themselves through violence.

    This "insurgency" is not going to end until the most important lines are finally drawn, --- the boundary lines, separating each "tribe" into their own ruling domains.

    Mankind has always and will always fight to the end for their country, their territory, their religion, their everything....

    That is a Truth of any country, any heritage. Call it nationalism, call it anything you want except an untruth.

    Presently, lines already mark territories guarded by numerous militias that answer only to their own leaders.

    Therefore --- The INEVITABLE --- divide Iraq into three countries: Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites. And most important, divide the wealth equally. Then and only then can true nation building take place. That should have been the goal from the beginning.

    Iran will control the south no matter what. If Turkey invades the Kurdish "nation" then NATO is nothing more than a farce. Central Iran (Sunni) can then play out it's power over itself, as will the others.

    If it's still not too late, perhaps it's worth diverting our efforts towards that solution.

    But would the Bush Administration condone such a change in its policy, it would mean admitting a mistake --- and aren't they all infallible --- in their own words, in their own minds, it's always someone else's fault - (does "faulty intelligence" come to mind?)

    "Stay the Course" has been their eternal mantra, a course mapped by lies.

    Truth requires Courage, while Strength requires character, and Wisdom will ensure a lasting and true peace. Yet none of those qualities can be in effect until the curtain of lies is lifted. And that is where Courage still waits its turn.

    Does the Administration have the Strength, Courage, and Wisdom to understand the future --- and not use the excuse of, "...nobody could have predicted, nobody could have imagined."

    Republicans used that excuse in their past, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the insurgency in Iraq. It's become an idiot's answer to the very end of time.

    If they only saw the Truth..... they could predict the future!

    Posted by bohdan yuri at 03/27/2006 @ 6:21pm

42. To Rio Bravo:

    Nothing like another or broadened insustainable conspiracy fantasy to bring on a feeding frenzy! I think KVH is just trying to distract everyone from her appearance as a wingnut "raver" on "Meet the Depressed" on Sunday!

    How's that search for Saddam's biochemical arsenal going? Are you looking for them in Iraq or Syria?

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 03/27/2006 @ 6:29pm

43. Why is reading an official memo now considered conspiratorial? Folks like Rio (and I hesitate to mention even part of his name) can't seem to keep even the most basic things straight: conspiracy is when one head of state plots with another head of state to conduct a war based on trumped up evidence; conspiracy is NOT exposing that one head of state plotted with another head of state to conduct a war based on trumped up evidence; however, it could be conspiratorial to have knowledge of a conspiracy and refuse to acknowledge the most basic relevance of such information.

    Conspiracy? Thy name is Rio Bravo. Or CPT. Or anyone else who refuses to call the nose on his face anything other than his nose.

    Posted by tjbehrens1 at 03/27/2006 @ 6:35pm

44. BRING OUR TROOPS HOME 11 Feb 2006. Iraq is not nearly the last war nor the bloodiest nor the most frightening that we will be fighting unless we get our ship in order. Be perfectly aware and be loudly forewarned that if we lack the will to change our dependent ways, thereby necessitating future conflicts, our military and our troops will rightly be seen as an international mercenary force in the employ of a failed national energy policy. "http://cognitorex.blogspot.com"

    Posted by cognitorex at 03/27/2006 @ 7:37pm

45. Further note to USC1:

    I quote from the Wikipedia [en.wikipedia.org] entry on Hussein Kamel:

    Kamel maintained that Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction and related programs after the end of the first Gulf War. "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons--biological, chemical, missile, nuclear--were destroyed." Britain's Foreign Office has stated that they disbelieved this claim, while a March 3, 2003 Newsweek report said that Kamel's revelations were "hushed up" because inspectors "hoped to bluff Saddam [Hussein] into revealing still more." Kamel's version of events appear to have been borne out in the wake of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq . . . .

    In the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bush administration figures--including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell--repeatedly cited Kamel's testimony as evidence that Iraq had produced unconventional weapons, without mentioning that, according to Kamel, all such weapons had been destroyed.

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 03/27/2006 @ 8:22pm

46. TJB

    Don't go confusing CPT or LL with facts...they's got much more important stuff to consider!

    Posted by leftofcenter at 03/27/2006 @ 9:19pm

47. Jack:

    His own words to Saddam to the contrary. So, again, which of his "stories" do we believe?

    Or maybe we should believe the words of Georges Sada, Saddam's former No.2 Air Force official, who states that Saddam transported WMDs/materials into Syria before the war. (Saddam's Secrets)

    Or maybe we should believe Nizar Nayouf, a Syrian journalist who has since defected to France, who on Jan. 25, 2004 told the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that chemical and biological weapons were smuggled into Syria when US invasion became imminent. He listed three sites where they were kept. One was a tunnel under the town of al-Baida which was originally built for producing a Syrian version of the Scud missile. The others were Tal Snan, a town adjacent to an air base, and in Sjinsjar (on the Syria-Lebanon border).

    Point being, there are apparently many "truths" to this story, one which is still developing, and we can't yet draw conclusions. Personally, I think that the answer lies somewhere in the 3000 hours of taped conversations between Saddam and his officials.

    Posted by usc1 at 03/27/2006 @ 9:44pm

48. USC1:

    If you want to believe (to borrow Rio Bravo's phrase) an "insustainable conspiracy fantasy" about Saddam handing his arsenal off to Syria, go right ahead. To me, it sounds like stuff from which bad movies are made.

    Were I president of a country under the threat of an invasion from a madman who won't be satisfied (Saddam and Bush do have a few things in common, don't they?) handing such weapons off to some other nation is the last thing I would do. I'd get them ready for use. And if the invading army were amassed at the border, as British and American troops were just before the balloon went up, I'd use them right then. I'd hit them with everything I've got while the enemy is all bunched together in one place.

    The difference between me and Saddam is that I would lose sleep over it; he would not.

    As an aside, hit them with everything he had is exactly what I thing he did: four pathetic missiles, three of which landed harmlessly in the sea and fourth was a dud.

    Believing what General Kamel said makes sense. It is consistent with what Major Ritter saw three years later, what the UN inspectors found before the invasion and with what the US Army found afterward. That doesn't even introduce an element of an "insustainable conspiracy fantasy."

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 03/27/2006 @ 10:28pm

49. Jack:

    I don't really consider myself prone to conspiracy theories, but that does beg the question "do conspiracy theorists know that they are conspiracy theorists?".

    But to answer your questions, I don't necessarily believe that Sada's and Nayouf's versions are any more "conspiracy" than Kamil's. Consider both David Kay's and Charles Duefler's official government reports state that while no significant WMDs were found, they did find evidence of "WMD activities," equipment previously concealed from UN inspectors, and evidence that Saddam wanted to restart his WMD programs. They also BOTH concluded that large amounts of unknown materials were transported to Syria before the war. These are their official reports, not conspiracy. So maybe there is some truth to what Nayouf and Sada stated. (Furthermore, remember the big hubbub about the tons of explosives at the "camp" outside Baghdad (I forget the name of the "camp") that went missing from right under our military's nose that was blamed on Bush incompetence? We never did figure out what happened to them. So apparently it is possible to transport large amounts of explosives without getting caught.)

    According to Sada, Saddam didn't use his WMDs for (possibly) several reasons: 1) They could not be made ready in time 2) They would not stop the inevitable and Saddam would then have been caught in a lie (that he had WMDs after all) or 3) [most likely] Saddam thought he would be left in power as after Gulf War I and could retrieve the WMDs from Syria later.

    Posted by usc1 at 03/27/2006 @ 11:24pm

50. While well intentioned Americans argue about whether or not the Administration illegally maneuvered us into the war in Iraq and and whether or not there was a strategy to invade Iraq even before 9/11, American soldiers keep dying in the midst of this civil war, innocent Iraqi deaths and casualties mount by the 100s weekly, little or no headway is made in reconstruction efforts, $90+ billion is added to our deficit per year, insufficient funds remain for such necessary programs as education our children, and the deficit mounts to a degree that your grandchildren will be paying about $200,000 in taxes over the course of their lifetimes just to pay off the war debt. Meanwhile, each side digs a deeper trench to shout more loudly "I am right and everyone else is wrong" with no willingness to consider that their person interests perpetuate every single one of the social ills I just enumerated. Mothers, daughters, sisters, girl friends,, lovers, wives, husbands, fathers, sons and daughters all cry at night from the loss of their loved ones, many lose hope in any future for their families and themselves. And all everyone can do is cry out, "I am right." It no longer matters who was/is right. The President clings to unsupportable positions and provides used car salesman-like sales pitches to try to regather support for his untenable positions and watches as weekly polls announce that the current majority of Americans favor an exit strategy be implimented immediately. What matters in this time is a sane approach to the humanitarian cause of giving up the position of the ego. Stop identifying with positions made. Don't define yourselves by your arguments or try to justify in your conscience whatever vote you may have cast in 2000 and 2004. It's all ok. Morality and ethical responsibility demand that every individual in the US look at what the war has wrought, realize the truth that this war in Iraq has not, and can never, make the US safer from anything, let alone some amorphous threat of world terrorism. Remember that the war in Iraq need never have been fought if Bush had spent an extra, oh say $2 billion when all of al Qaeda was cornered in Tora Bora, because, even assuming Iraq had WMDs (which we now know they did not), there would have been no al Qaeda left to use them. It's time to save lives, stop foolish spending, demand elected officials listen to the will of the majority, and start to focus on providing our children and grandchilren a better world than the one that was given to us, or are people too selfish to consider that moral imperative?

    Posted by Lennonist at 03/28/2006 @ 10:14am

51. So right you are, Jack Rabbit, and I quote: "BRING OUR TROOPS HOME 11 Feb 2006. Iraq is not nearly the last war nor the bloodiest nor the most frightening that we will be fighting unless we get our ship in order. Be perfectly aware and be loudly forewarned that if we lack the will to change our dependent ways, thereby necessitating future conflicts, our military and our troops will rightly be seen as an international mercenary force in the employ of a failed national energy policy. "http://cognitorex.blogspot.com"

    A failed national energy policy, indeed. And a grand opportunity for war profiteering by Halliburton and other so called "defense contractors." These companies, rich as they are, could not afford to wage war for control of Iraq's oil. They needed a war chest of American troops and taxpayer dollars, which Bush-Cheney and their GOP sychophants indeed provided. These traitors deserve nothing less than impeachment and criminal prosecution. But we all know this will not occur. Our hope for changing our tragic course in Iraq rests first with the 2006 mid-term elections and booting the GOP out of absolute control of our House and Senate. As BP commercials proclaim of their so-called alternative energy initiatives: "It's a start."

    As for energy policy, if animal poop can be turned into fuel for our cars, why not human waste? Endless source of energy there, especially if you count the bullshit coming out of Washington DC. No reason our country has no meaningful alternative fuel development based on city sewage plants, or anything else, except our government's protection of the oil industry's interests at the expense of our future.

    Posted by Gooddog at 03/28/2006 @ 1:23pm

52. to USC1:

    According to Sada, Saddam didn't use his WMDs for (possibly) several reasons: 1) They could not be made ready in time 2) They would not stop the inevitable and Saddam would then have been caught in a lie (that he had WMDs after all) or 3) Saddam thought he would be left in power as after Gulf War I and could retrieve the WMDs from Syria later.

    Saddam knew that the invasion was coming and would have been foolish not to get his weapons ready, if he had them. He had over a year to prepare for war after September 11, when the Bush regime started saying "Saddam" in the same sentence with "Osama" to get them ready. The argument that he had no time is preposterous.

    It would not have bothered Saddam to have been caught in a lie any more than it bothered him to gas Kurds. Like Bush and the neocons, Saddam believes that leaders have a right to lie to get what they want, only he didn't have a tradition of a Constitution based on the concept of the rule of law and open government to destroy in the process.

    The third point is absurd. The stated purpose of Bush's plan was "regime change." Saddam knew that if war came he would be forced from power by the conquering army.

    The idea of transferring one's entire arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to a third party is simply counter-intuitive. It is absurd to believe that Saddam or any one else would send the weapons to Syria -- governed by an unstable regime with an incompetent spoiled brat as its titular president -- and then, when the danger had passed, asked to get them back. What guarantees would he have had that he would get them back? I can just see some grinning Syrian commander leaning on a missile armed with anthrax telling Saddam, "You want them back? Come and get them, sucker."

    What Saddam wanted to do, above all else, was survive with his hold on power in tact. He knew that he couldn't win a war against the US, even if had such weapons, and that the stated purpose of the war was to remove him from power. Therefore, he had to avoid war and the only way he could do that was to invite inspectors in and convince the world that he had no weapons. He did just that.

    Bush wanted something more than demonstrating that Saddam had no weapons. Had he allowed the inspections process to run its course, he would have come out smelling like a rose. He could have claimed, "We didn't know whether or not Saddam had weapons, and now we know he does not. See, our strategy worked." Who would have argued with that?

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 03/29/2006 @ 12:34pm

53. Jack:

    I would respectfully disagree. By that, I don't mean to suggest that the reasons are incontrovertible truths (after all they are the OPINIONS of Gen. Sada, nothing more), but I don't think that we should summarily dismiss them as preposterous or absurd.

    Saddam knew that the invasion was coming and would have been foolish not to get his weapons ready, if he had them. He had over a year to prepare for war after September 11, when the Bush regime started saying "Saddam" in the same sentence with "Osama" to get them ready. The argument that he had no time is preposterous.

    A good response to that would be to ask a question: "Why would Saddam take our "warnings" seriously at all after 12 years and 16 or 17 UN resolutions and empty threats?" I think that by the time Saddam realized Bush wasn't bluffing and was willing to "go it alone" without the UN (Saddam was counting on Russia, China and France to prevent any UN action), it would have been too late to ready weapons. He wouldn't have wanted to use WMDs anyway (see below).

    It would not have bothered Saddam to have been caught in a lie any more than it bothered him to gas Kurds. Like Bush and the neocons, Saddam believes that leaders have a right to lie to get what they want, only he didn't have a tradition of a Constitution based on the concept of the rule of law and open government to destroy in the process.

    I agree with your assessment of Saddam's prevailing attitude [although not so much with Bush's:-)]. However, I think he needed to maintain the lie about WMDs. Again, using WMDs would not have stopped his eventual removal (and forced Russia, China, France, etc to pony up against him, which they would not want to do because of all their illegal deals), yet would have proved that the US was right all along. So, if the US invaded, then his only hope was to "prove" Bush wrong. This claim is (somewhat) confirmed by Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, former commander of Fedayeen militia, at Worldthreats.com who says this was all part of Saddam's plan. "What we are witnessing now is many who opposed the war to begin with are rallying around Saddam saying,'we overthrew a sovereign leader based on a lie about WMDs.' This is exactly what Saddam wanted and predicted."

    Keep in mind, that even after he allowed inspectors back in, Saddam continued to play cat and mouse games.

    I'll stop there, mainly because I hate trying to defend someone else's opinions. Suffice it to say that I have tried to keep an open mind about all of this, partly because I don't trust Saddam at all and believe that there isn't much that he wouldn't do to embarass the US and partly because I still hold out hope that we were right to do this all along. Having listened to both sides, though, I believe there are enough unanswered questions about Iraq/Syria to investigate further. If that makes me a conspiracy theorist, then I guess I'll have to change my name to Rese.

    :-)

    Posted by usc1 at 03/29/2006 @ 4:11pm