Bushies put hunt for WMD on 'back burner'

[Q]

WMD Hunt May Be Back-Burnered

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2003

(CBS/AP) U.S. officials are considering shifting intelligence resources from hunting for Iraq's alleged illegal weapons to tracking the fighters attacking U.S. troops, a newspaper reports.

According to The New York Times, the Bush administration is considering transferring some intelligence officers and linguists from the weapons hunt to counterterrorism efforts. But officials stressed that the possible move would not signal the end of the weapons search.

The central argument in the case for war was the claim that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and a program to develop nuclear weapons. To date, U.S. teams have discovered neither weapons nor active programs to produce them, raising doubts about the rationale for the March invasion.

On Tuesday, a top U.S. intelligence official said Iraq may have moved weapons into Syria before the U.S. invaded, and President Bush defended his decision to attack.

But a former intelligence official claims the intelligence on Iraq was flawed.

In the weapons debate, a key question has been whether intelligence agencies provided bad data or the Bush administration politicized the information it received. - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/25/iraq/main560449.shtml?cmp=EM8706

[bluestateguy]

1. Uh huh

Until about the last week of October of 2004, when weapons will be "found".

[Endangered Specie]

2. Hark, have they given up

Or is it just now weve got our hands so full we need to stop chasing what they KNOW (and KNEW) isn't there?

Talk about stepping in shit.

[skeptic9]

3. If this move is a response to Dubya's slip-up in yesterday's 'press conference'...

it's EXTREMELY good news for our democracy. This could be the start of getting our country back from Dubya's Ministry of Fear and Propaganda.

In a functioning democracy, the media hold the president accountable for really important things, such as tthe safety of US personnel in uniform. Yesterday, Dubya flubbed badly a response to a question about the source of attacks on our soldiers in Iraq. Memorably, he said,

"We're trying to determine the nature of who these people were. But I will tell you, I would assume that they're either, or, and probably both Baathists and foreign terrorists. The Baathists try to create chaos and fear because they realize that a free Iraq will deny them the excessive privileges they had under Saddam Hussein. The foreign terrorists are trying to create conditions of fear and retreat because they fear a free and peaceful state in the midst of the part of the world where terror has found recruits, that freedom is exactly what terrorists fear the most." (From http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/10/20031028-2.html )

What a lame and self-serving answer! Paul Begala took Dubya to the woodshed on this within hours on "Crossfire", and the very next day there seems to be movement toward ending a knowingly wasteful "search" for non-existent WMD and shifting resources to sorely-needed counterintelligence.

Now, if only the media would stop letting Dubya get away with not attending funerals of the people killed in Iraq. They would not have been there in the first place had he not dreamed of selling action-"hero" toy figures of his AWOL self in a pilot's costume. But WH press corps members may be afraid they "won't be invited to lunch" if they ask Dubya the same kind of questions they'd ask of anybody else in the White House.

[Zomby Woof]

4. getting awfully crowded on that back burner

What with Osama, Saddam, etc etc...... must be quite a few on that stove!

[Rose Siding]

5. But what will happen to the $100million?

Today's legislation includes that much for the "hunt". I'm sure they'll return every penny now.