Bob Novak: I Had Better Sources Than Bush On Iraq

[sabra]

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/12/23/novak-had-better-sources-than-bush-on-iraq/

Novak: I Had Better Sources Than Bush On Iraq


This afternoon on CNN, Bob Novak did a farewell interview with Wolf Blitzer to commemorate the end of his 25-year career with the network (before he heads over to the more comfortable surroundings of Fox News). In the interview, Novak revealed that he had better pre-war intel sources on Iraq than President Bush did:



NOVAK: I said several times on this network that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

BLITZER: How did you know that and the President of the United States, Vice President of the United States were convinced that there were?

NOVAK: Because my sources. I don’t run my own CIA. My sources didn’t think there were — in the military, people I trusted. And the indication of the inspectors indicated there was no weapons.

[RagingInMiami]

1. Yeah, but did he write about it before the war?

Fucking arrogant bastard.

[fujiyama]

7. He may have

Novak is absolute scum. Wait, lower than scum. He's shit.

But...

IIRC, he was actually against the war originally. Novak is a lot like Buchanan and is more of a paleocon...but in the end, he's little more than RW Bush ass kisser than anything else and that's why he leaked Plame's identity.

[H2O Man]

2. So it's come to the point

where that nasty poodle Novak is taking shots at Bush and Cheney. Strange.

[Straight Shooter]

3. Well, it's either his a** or theirs which will be strung up

in the court of public opinion. That's a no-brainer for Novak. He's going to do his best to exonerate himself. I can't wait until he turns on Rove, or Rove turns on him.

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

5. I think he's already turned on Rove and he's

scared shitless something will "happen" to him or maybe it's dementia settling in.

[Garbo 2004]

9. Novak already spilled his guts to Fitz. Didn't see him fighting a subpoena

to protect his sources, did you? He already gave up Rover long ago, right quick.

And since when does Novak care about public opinion? They don't pay his salary (although he's a rich old bastard and doesn't need to work at all.) He's going to be working for Fox. Maybe he's going to be one of their "lefty" commentators if he's going to continue to take shots at Bush and Cheney. LOL. But I doubt it.

[Catherine Vincent]

4. I remember a cspan caller a while back called Novak

a Bush hater. I thought the caller was nuts. Maybe he was right.

[pretzel4gore]

6. what was iraq's military budget?

these conmen get away with the most ridiculous notions because, well because elvis lives in the attic, or something. a nation's military capacity is measured almost exclusively by its budget, and iraq's military budget has never even approached mid level powers

http://www.borgenproject.org/index.html

World's Largest
Military Budgets:
($U.S. Billions)
United States 416.0
Russia* 65.0
China* 47.0
Japan 42.6
U.K. 38.4
France 29.5
Germany 24.9
Saudi Arabia 21.3
Italy 19.4
India 15.6
South Korea 14.1
Brazil* 10.7
Taiwan* 10.7
Israel 10.6
Spain 8.4
Australia 7.6
Canada 7.6
Netherlands 6.6
Turkey 5.8
Mexico 5.9
Kuwait* 3.9
Ukraine 5.0
Iran 4.8
Singapore 4.8
Sweden 4.5
Egypt* 4.4
Norway 3.8
Greece 3.5
Poland 3.5
Argentina* 3.3
U.A.E.* 3.1
Colombia* 2.9
Belgium 2.7
Pakistan* 2.6
Denmark 2.4
Vietnam 2.4
North Korea 2.1
Czech Republic 1.6
Iraq 1.4
Philippines 1.4
Portugal 1.3
Libya 1.2
Hungary 1.1
Syria 1.0
Cuba 0.8
Sudan 0.6
Yugoslavia 0.7
Luxembourg 0.2
Source: www.cdi.org.

[Garbo 2004]

8. Notice Wolfie's obligatory "Bush & Cheney were convinced" there were WMD.

No, they just insisted to the public that Saddam had WMD's and launched a PR campaign to convince the stooges. I recall Wolfowitz's comment basically that WMD were the easiest selling point to promote the war to the American public. Totally cynical fear mongering.

Like Ritter said in a recent debate with Hitchens, Bush Inc didn't give a rats ass about Saddam's WMD which is the myth they created and promoted. (Oh yeah, Saddam was going to have ships sail near American shores and launch his drones to bomb us, remember that one? Jeez.) It was ALL about regime change.