NYTimes Editorial--Remember That Mushroom Cloud?

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/02/opinion/02weds1.html?hp

November 2, 2005
Editorial
Remember That Mushroom Cloud?

The indictment of Lewis Libby on charges of lying to a grand jury about the outing of Valerie Wilson has focused attention on the lengths to which the Bush administration went in 2003 to try to distract the public from this central fact: American soldiers found a lot of things in Iraq, including a well-armed insurgency their bosses never anticipated, but they did not find weapons of mass destruction.

It's clear from the indictment that Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff formed the command bunker for this misdirection campaign. But there is a much larger issue than the question of what administration officials said about Iraq after the invasion - it's what they said about Iraq before the invasion. Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader, may have been grandstanding yesterday when he forced the Senate to hold a closed session on the Iraqi intelligence, but at least he gave the issue a much-needed push.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet, to name a few leading figures, built support for the war by telling the world that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling chemical weapons, feverishly developing germ warfare devices and racing to build a nuclear bomb. Some of them, notably Mr. Cheney, the administration's doomsayer in chief, said Iraq had conspired with Al Qaeda and implied that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11.

Last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee did a good bipartisan job of explaining that the intelligence in general was dubious, old and even faked by foreign sources. The panel said the analysts had suffered from groupthink. At the time, the highest-ranking officials in Washington were demanding evidence against Iraq.........

[rodeodance]

1. Phase II--there has been only one uncirculated draft report.

....Were officials fooled by bad intelligence, or knowingly hyping it? Certainly, the administration erased caveats, dissents and doubts from the intelligence reports before showing them to the public. And there was never credible intelligence about a working relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Under a political deal that Democrats should not have approved, the Intelligence Committee promised to address these questions after the 2004 election. But a year later, there is no sign that this promise is being kept, other than unconvincing assurances from Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican who is chairman of the intelligence panel, that people are working on it.

So far, however, there has been only one uncirculated draft report by one committee staff member on the narrow question of why the analysts didn't predict the ferocity of the insurgency. The Republicans have not even agreed to do a final report on the conflict between the intelligence and the administration's public statements.

Mr. Reid wrested a commitment from the Senate to have a bipartisan committee report by Nov. 14 on when the investigation will be done. We hope Mr. Roberts now gives this half of the investigation the same urgency he gave the first half and meets his commitment to examine all aspects of this mess, including how the information was used by the administration. Americans are long overdue for an answer to why they were told there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

[whatever4]

2. What I'd be asking now...

" And there was never credible intelligence about a working relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

That reminds me of my real question now: When, with whom, and WHY exactly was the idea of going to war with Iraq invented in the first place?? Who started talking about it? Precisely why did he/they bring it up??

I think we need to get at the root of this and find out where it started, before we'll understand all the real reasons for the war and the confusion over it. That's where I see the lies to the American public and the illegal actions beginning to occur, and I think it would show how trumped up this war always was.

They were "fooled", but, what were they looking for in the first place? Why were they looking, what drew their eye, sketch it out for us.

Surely any loss in intelligence we might suffer in the telling of the whole story would be EASILY AND COMPLETELY OVERCOME by the relief and support of the American people knowing their trust was being kept and their lives being guarded. Right??

Say they tell us something classified involving Iraq. It hurts our military/ national security effort, lets assume, it was why we weren't told originally. Sensitive information. Or, instead lets say this information is kept secret, and they don't tell us anything, and, they lose support for the efforts of the military as well as the actions of the government which causes erosion of all the efforts and, again, it hurts our military/national security effort. The first issue can be repaired with continued efforts along the same path, keeping real secrets secret with appropriate safeguards, but giving us enough information to understand the reasons for what was done. It might be a sacrifice, but it would be a limited and controlled one. The second solution will continue to have the same problems and cannot be repaired without changing direction and abandoning efforts in order to regain trust, because we cannot continue on the present path if all support is lost. The lies will not continue to work. Very high ranking officials are facing charges and people are dying. The momentum has already shifted, and it won't shift back while the situation continues, but it will continue to slide.

If this government "came clean", it might hurt, but it would be a constructive kind of pain. If it continues as it is, it will continue to bleed us and cannot become constructive.

They really ought to tell us exactly why we're there, if we're there for a "good" reason, because there is no good reason we can see now. If there were NO good reasons, and we're dealing with criminals...they still need to come clean. It's not going to get any better. Cut bait, cut losses, and tell the American people what the hell is going on.

What happened, who did it, and WHY about Iraq?

My early two cents with coffee :)

[jimshoes]

3. It may go back even before the

election of 2000. Here is a link that has a few insights as to what the boy blunder was thinking.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0829-22.htm

[whatever4]

4. Yes, I completely agree, it would probably go there, and should nm

[UpInArms]

5. here's a good starting place

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

January 26, 1998

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.

<snip>

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

<snip>

Elliott Abrams    Richard L. Armitage    William J. Bennett

Jeffrey Bergner    John Bolton    Paula Dobriansky

Francis Fukuyama    Robert Kagan    Zalmay Khalilzad

William Kristol    Richard Perle    Peter W. Rodman

Donald Rumsfeld    William Schneider, Jr.    Vin Weber

Paul Wolfowitz    R. James Woolsey    Robert B. Zoellick

[otohara]

6. As A Matter of Fact - Thanks to The NYT's Judith Miller

THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE IRAQIS; U.S. SAYS HUSSEIN INTENSIFIES QUEST FOR A-BOMB PARTS
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JUDITH MILLER

More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today.

In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials said several efforts to arrange the shipment of the aluminum tubes were blocked or intercepted but declined to say, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped.

The diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq's nuclear program, officials said, and that the latest attempt to ship the material had taken place in recent months.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/health/article-printpage.html?res=9402EFDE1E3EF93BA3575AC0A9649C8B63

Cheney, Condi, Rummy, and others weren't the only one's spouting this lie.