HISTORY LESSON The belief Saddam had WMD might have been an honest mistake

[MelissaB]

HISTORY LESSON
The belief Saddam had WMD might have been an honest mistake; nevertheless, it was dead wrong.

Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

PRESIDENT Bush used the occasion of Veterans Day to accuse his critics of irresponsibly rewriting the history of how the war in Iraq began. The final history of our entanglement has not been written, much less rewritten, but the president is right if he suggests that partisan charges and countercharges are obscuring the facts:



•The administration's belief that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had piles of weapons of mass destruction lying around might have been an honest mistake. Nevertheless, it is an undisputed fact that the administration's prewar claims about WMD were wrong. So was all the intelligence on WMD fed to Bush by the nation's intelligence agencies. So were the bold assertions then-Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out in a speech to the United Nations. Bush rewarded this massive error by awarding the man largely responsible for it, former CIA Director George Tenet, with the Medal of Freedom, inappropriately suggesting that the error was understandable and that no one needed to be held accountable.
•Another source of false information, disgraced Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, deputy prime minister in Iraq's interim government, was warmly received by senior administration officials in Washington last week. Chalabi met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and others, despite being the target of an FBI investigation to determine whether Chalabi gave Iran information on U.S. code-breaking.
In a speech to a private policy forum, Chalabi said the charge that he deliberately misled the United States about Saddam's threat was "an urban myth." Borrowing from Mark Twain, if Chalabi is not one of the world's biggest liars, he has missed it only by the skin of his teeth.

•By keeping Karl Rove as White House deputy chief of staff and praising indicted Cheney aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the president needlessly casts doubt on his — and his administration's — commitment to the truth. Both Rove and Libby misled the president and the American people concerning their role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, but Bush seems not to mind.
•The president is correct that many Democrats, believing Saddam possessed WMD, voted to authorize Bush to use force against Iraq. But one reason for authorizing force given at the time was to put Saddam on notice that he must cooperate with U.N. inspectors. Inspections, combined with economic sanctions, had kept Saddam from developing new weapons of mass destruction or replacing his former conventional military capability.
•Bush is also correct that the intelligence agencies of the free world shared the inaccurate belief that Saddam had WMD and was developing more. But in the so-called Downing Street memo, a senior British intelligence official advised Prime Minister Tony Blair that Bush would invade Iraq no matter what the intelligence indicated.
•If the Senate Intelligence Committee had not delayed its investigation into whether the administration misused or exaggerated intelligence, definitive answers to that question might be at hand. The long delay fans suspicions that key senators fear the answer could be yes.
Whatever the answer, the American people deserve to know the truth, unmolested by partisan spin.

Link: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/3458317

[pretzel4gore]

1. world's 4th largest army, iraq?....no, north korea!

or was that cuba? iran? syria?
military strength is measured by budgets, and budgets depend on the size of the country, and how well developed etc it is...these fukkers pretend they're stupid (not we, them!) and get away with it because admitting stupidity is so unbearably honest and humble etc

[Warren Stupidity]

2. Nope.

It was not an honest mistake. The decision to go to war with Iraq in order to topple Saddam and take control of Iraqi oil had been made in '98. The installation of the Bush-Cheney regime through fraud in 2001, the LIHOP-ed attack on the WTC in september of that year, and the organized effort to suppress contrary intelligence and magnify any supporting intelligence no matter how questionable or outright bogus were all intentional and completely outside the meaning of 'mistake' or 'honest'. Until we as a nation, as a people, come to terms with what has been done in our name, of the crimes that have been committed both against our own people and against the people of the world, there is no hope for us.

[WinkyDink]

3. "Honest"??

Oh, wait; that's a TEXASS newspaper.

[Sinistrous]

4. Article is a handy compendium of Retrog Talking Points,

sprinkled with the usual assortment of outright lies and misrepresentations.

I especially enjoyed the Chronicle's using the Powell UN speech as a "source." I also like the sneakily false statement : "So was all the intelligence on WMD fed to Bush by the nation's intelligence agencies."

Given bush's detachment and mind-numbing stupidity, it is possible that all the "intelligence" that passed his eyes was nothing more than the cherry-picked, massaged, spun, and twisted pap that Cheney-Rumsfield and the Office of Special Plans wanted him to see. However, the actual intelligence provided by the nation's real intelligence agencies was radically different than the misinformation that spewed from the mouth of bush.

If we develop counters to the points in this article, we will have good rebuttals to the spin we are now hearing.

Sinistrous

[rainy]

5. The inspectors were finding nothing! We would say look here

where we THOUGHT the weapons would be and the inspections would come up with NOTHING. This is proof we went to war after learning that our intelligence was WRONG. If we believed there were weapons before the war the inspections had already proved us wrong. Therefore: we knew the intelligence was wrong before we attacked. And the world should know this.

[Village Idiot]

6. Puh-LEEZE! MANY OF US HERE have known since 2003...

[NNN0LHI]

7. Even if it were an honest mistake what are we still doing there? n/t

[BOSSHOG]

8. He did have WMD in the early 90's and thanks to Pres Clinton

and the cooperative efforts of Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and the successful Operations Southern and Northern Watch, hussein's air force was kept on the ground and the weapons inspectors were allowed to do their job in the 90's with minimal loss of life. By the time bush 43 started to stain the white house, hussein was neutered because for the previous eight years we had a true leader as President. Its all very simple. But the neocons know they can lie because of citizens like those on free republic will swallow those lies with gusto and are much to proud to admit they were duped, misled, fucked.

[mmonk]

9. He did,

they were just under lock and key by the UN. They basically had chemical stockpiles (probably ineffective by now) and no "real" WMD's, just yellowcake with no way to refine it further.