THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

[Abbas said that at Aqaba, Bush promised to speak with Sharon about the siege on Arafat. He said nobody can speak to or pressure Sharon except the Americans.

According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."]

The real reason Bush invaded Iraq in his own words;

(I am of course paraphrasing her remarks but this is the gist of it.)

I would suggest that everybody have this conversation face to face with your elected congressperson or at least inquire via telephone or e-mail. And compare his/her answers now with his/her remarks prior to or during the initial phase of the Iraqi invasion. You'll find that some of the most virulent of the President's opposition were talking a much different game then than they are now. My congressperson has not changed her stance in the least from then to now.

I presume if one believes that their elected officials are or were lying or deluded (or had been totally tricked by the former and present administrations), such person has an inside track on what the true motives were and have just been unable to convince the media that the government has run amuck. Or maybe such person actually believes his/her own propaganda.

I'm not picking on Steve because his opinions here are typical of those who are in opposition to the present administration. But it's all propaganda other than what is actually on the record. And what's on the record is virtually identical to what was on the record in the Clinton adminsitration. To assume motives other than what is on the reocrd is simply an assumption that doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

But such an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country required a public rationale. And so the Bush administration struck fear into the hearts of Americans about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD, starting with nuclear arms. In his first major address on the "Iraqi threat" in October 2002, President Bush invoked fiery images of mushroom clouds and mayhem, saying, "Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

Yet, before that speech, the White House had intelligence calling this assertion into questionthere was no indication Iraq ever achieved nuclear capability or had any physical capacity for producing weapons-grade nuclear material in the near future.

In February 2001, the CIA delivered a report to the White House that said: "We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programs." Cheney went on national television days before the war and claimed Iraq "has reconstituted nuclear weapons." He was echoed by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who told reporters of supposedly grave "concerns about Iraq's potential nuclear programs

Thanks clylop.

Foxfrye, you seemed to question whether it was Abbas or Bush who said what Gel put in the quote; because it was someone saying something that someone else said to him. Yet you expect us to believe that you had that conversation with a congressional representative on just your word.

I believe you did, I have no reason not to believe it.

Just like I don't think it out of realms of possibilities that Bush said what Abbas said he said.

I suppose next we are going to have a grammar/dictionary lesson on probable and possible which is impossible to prove either way but it gives credence to the idea that it is not probable.

Iraqis Find Graves Thought to Hold Hussein's Victims
By ROBERT F. WORTH

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 14 - Investigators have discovered several mass graves in southern Iraq that are believed to contain the bodies of people killed by Saddam Hussein's government, including one estimated to hold 5,000 bodies, Iraqi officials say.

The graves, discovered over the past three months, have not yet been dug up because of the risks posed by the continuing insurgency and the lack of qualified forensic workers, said Bakhtiar Amin, Iraq's interim human rights minister. But initial excavations have substantiated the accounts of witnesses to a number of massacres. If the estimated body counts prove correct, the new graves would be among the largest in the grim tally of mass killings that have gradually come to light since the fall of Mr. Hussein's government two years ago. At least 290 grave sites containing the remains of some 300,000 people have been found since the American invasion two years ago, Iraqi officials say.

Forensic evidence from some graves will feature prominently in the trials of Mr. Hussein and the leaders of his government. The trials are to start this spring.

One of the graves, near Basra, in the south, appears to contain about 5,000 bodies of Iraqi soldiers who joined a failed uprising against Mr. Hussein's government after the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Another, near Samawa, is believed to contain the bodies of 2,000 members of the Kurdish clad led by Massoud Barzani.

As many as 8,000 men and boys from the clan disappeared in 1983 after being rounded up in northern Iraq by security forces at the command of Ali Hassan al-Majid, widely known as Chemical Ali. It remains unclear, however, how the victims ended up in the south.

Investigators have also discovered the remains of 58 Kuwaitis spread across several sites, including what appears to be a family of two adults and five children who were crushed by a tank, Mr. Amin said. At least 605 Kuwaitis disappeared at the time of the first gulf war, and before the latest graves were discovered, fewer than 200 had been accounted for, he added.

A smaller site was discovered near Nasiriya earlier this week. Arabic satellite television showed images of residents digging up remains there.

Mr. Amin declined to give the exact locations of the graves, saying it could endanger witnesses to the massacres and anyone working at the sites.

One obstacle to exhuming bodies has been an absence of DNA labs and forensic anthropologists in Iraq, Mr. Amin said.

In the aftermath of Mr. Hussein's fall, thousands of Iraqis overran mass grave sites, digging for their relatives' remains with backhoes, shovels, even their bare hands. A number of sites were looted, making identification of victims difficult, said Hanny Megally, Middle East director for the International Center for Transitional Justice.

The American occupation authority, after some initial hesitation, began classifying grave sites, and international teams began traveling to the sites in 2003 to conduct assessments or exhumations. But toward the end of 2004, rising violence led nearly all the teams to abandon their work.

Only one site has been fully examined, a grave of Kurdish victims in northern Iraq, Mr. Megally said. That work was overseen by the Regime Crimes Liaison Office, which is gathering evidence for the trials of Mr. Hussein and his deputies.

The interim Iraqi government, working with the United Nations, has drawn up plans for a National Center for Missing and Disappeared Persons that would have authority over all aspects of the process, from exhumations to providing assistance to victims' families.

Geli writes

Quote:

The real reason Bush invaded Iraq in his own words;

No, you're quoting 'the real reason Bush invaded Iraq' in Abbas' own words. A little precision please. Interesting source that.

You can also ask Foxy about that conversation, gauge context, verify statements, etc. In other words, you have a means to ascertain veracity -- you can cross examine her. But the larger point being, I believe, that you said it was Bush's words, when it was not "Bush's words," but rather Abbas' words. You agree?

So she admitted oil was an issue. But not for America. So if we follow the logic, one of the reasons the US invaded Iraq was to secure oil for everyone else.

Well, wasn't one of the STATED reasons that we went into Iraq that we wanted to stop Saddam's ability to threaten other countries? And who do they have a history of threatening in the last fifteen years, and why? I mean, that's not a fantastic idea, that's one of the major justifications for the war given to the American people. Cycloptichorn

... Are only tape-recorded and video-taped messages truly believable? I'm interested in hearing people's opinions on this issue if anyone feels like discussing it. Cycloptichorn

revel wrote:

Thanks clylop.

Foxfrye, you seemed to question whether it was Abbas or Bush who said what Gel put in the quote; because it was someone saying something that someone else said to him. Yet you expect us to believe that you had that conversation with a congressional representative on just your word.

I believe you did, I have no reason not to believe it.

Just like I don't think it out of realms of possibilities that Bush said what Abbas said he said.

I suppose next we are going to have a grammar/dictionary lesson on probable and possible which is impossible to prove either way but it gives credence to the idea that it is not probable.

You can also ask Foxy about that conversation, gauge context, verify statements, etc. In other words, you have a means to ascertain veracity -- you can cross examine her. But the larger point being, I believe, that you said it was Bush's words, when it was not "Bush's words," but rather Abbas' words. You agree?

I feel that it was an accurate quote ... those were
Bush's words. Why is that so hard to fathom?

1. President Bush announced to the nation, Tuesday night, 9/11/2001, that our war was not only with the terrorists who have declared war on us, it is also with those governments that “harbor” terrorists. President Bush announced to the nation, to Congress and to the rest of the world, Thursday night, 9/20/2001, that our war was not only with the terrorists who have declared war on us, it is also with those governments that “support” terrorists.