Kerry's "Global Test"

this stuff is not flying, I suggest you give it up.

Tell me exactly how much longer should the US have waited and why.

John Kerry reminds me of G. Gordon Liddy in his younger days. If you don't pay any particular attention to what the man is saying, he sounds like an oxford don or a gentleman of the old school but, the first time you ever actually listen to WHAT the man is saying, you get the impression he's nuts. It's the sort of a medium/message disconnect which would have given Marshall McLuham a case of heartburn.

Kerry wants our security decisions to pass a "global test". In practice, that would quite certainly have meant, in the case of Iraq, giving a veto over our policy decisions to a collection of French, German, Russian, and UN clowns who were all taking money from Saddam Hussein at the time:

Quote:

Kerry reminds me of G. Gordon Liddy in his younger days. There was this sort of a media/message disconnect. If you didn't pay any particular attention to what the guy was saying, he sounded like an Oxford don or a gentleman of the old school but, the first time you ever actually listened to four sentences in a row and paid attention to what was being said, the impression was GEEEEEEsh, this son of a bitch is CRAZY.

Who's crazy? The guy who tore apart the nuclear treaty with the modern world, the guy who looked like an absolute buffoon in the debates and the guy who has failed to take any semblance of accountability for his monumental failures during his term, or Kerry? Actually, if you listened to Kerry, you would no that he has NEVER changed his opinion on the current situation in Iraq. He has been consistent and steady on the issue the entire time, yet you haven't bothered to look at his platform, instead you let Faux news tell you what it is. Yep, great way to be objective with your analysis, you'd fit right in with the Bush administration, maybe they could use somebody as ignorant on the issues as yourself. You should send in your application, unfortunately you'll only have work for about 30 days.

At this stage, the following can be stated:

One, there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.

Second, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.

Three, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuge out of the aluminum tubes in question.

Fourth, although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet-production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in centrifuge enrichment program.

As I stated above, the IAEA will naturally continue further to scrutinize and investigate all of the above issues.

After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.

In late August 2002, I listened with trepidation to President Bush's burgeoning false allegations about Iraq's nuclear military capability. Even then one could discern that the sustained use of misinformation to support the invasion of Iraq showed that the President's claims were not based on any facts. I, having worked with Iraq's nuclear program for thirty years, reacted with a series of articles expounding on the fact that Iraq had ceased its nuclear weapon program at the start of the 1991 war. I refuted the claims and evidence most famously, or infamously, branded by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Security Council in February 2003 in which Powell argued that Iraq had rejuvenated its nuclear weapon program after the Gulf War.

With heightened apprehension, I listened to Vice President Dick Cheney's claim on MSNBC that the U.S. does not accept the results of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) extensive inspections nor its failure to find any evidence of a rejuvenated Iraqi nuclear weapon program. The IAEA explicitly exposed the fact that a uranium procurement document provided by British and American intelligence as a piece of evidence proving Iraq's nuclear weapon capability was in fact a planted forgery. Cheney provocatively claimed, on the day before Bush's 48 hours ultimatum to invade Iraq, that U.S. intelligence had proof otherwise. [...]

Bombing to waste, yet again, the main Nuclear Research Center at Tuwaitha, and foolishly allowing American soldiers to break IAEA protective seals and opening Tuwaitha's radioactive burial mound for looters who then contaminated themselves and their families, the Americans have yet to produce their "evidence" of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq. Why is Cheney now silent about Iraq's nuclear weapon program? With U.S. troops in control of Iraq, this information cannot be a "national security" issue anymore.

As I stated above, the IAEA will naturally continue further to scrutinize and investigate all of the above issues.

After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.

DOES CNSNEWS.COM HAVE THE STORY OF THE YEAR? [10/04 12:23 PM]

CNS News is a nice little right-of-center web-based wire service operating in Alexandria, Virginia. They seem like pretty solid reporters, and not likely to bite on, say, memos that are supposed to be from an Air National Guard office from 1972 that were created on Microsoft Word.

So it's kind of surprising to see this report:

Quote:

Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.

One of the Iraqi memos contains an order from Saddam for his intelligence service to support terrorist attacks against Americans in Somalia. The memo was written nine months before U.S. Army Rangers were ambushed in Mogadishu by forces loyal to a warlord with alleged ties to al Qaeda.

Other memos provide a list of terrorist groups with whom Iraq had relationships and considered available for terror operations against the United States.

Among the organizations mentioned are those affiliated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Ayman al-Zawahiri, two of the world's most wanted terrorists. Zarqawi is believed responsible for the kidnapping and beheading of several American civilians in Iraq and claimed responsibility for a series of deadly bombings in Iraq Sept. 30. Al-Zawahiri is the top lieutenant of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, allegedly helped plan the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist strikes on the U.S., and is believed to be the voice on an audio tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television Oct. 1, calling for attacks on U.S. and British interests everywhere.

CNS News is obviously confident in this report; they're inviting other reporters to check out the documents at their offices.

Here's my... concern. Why are we hearing about these documents now? I'm not saying I don't believe the documents, but I'm wondering why we haven't seen this unveiled in a major news conference at the Pentagon, White House, or U.S. embassy in Iraq.

October surprise? I just don't think this White House works that way. If you have evidence of WMDs and ties to terrorism in January or May or August, you show it to America and the world as soon as it's vetted and ready. By holding this back, you're giving critics of the war months and months to pound away at you. It would be the longest and most brutal "rope-a-dope" strategy (strategery?) in history.

UPDATE: The article says "The senior government official and source of the Iraqi intelligence memos, explained that the reason the documents have not been made public before now is that the government has "thousands and thousands of documents waiting to be translated... It is unlikely they even know this exists," the source added."

Wouldn't someone take these 42 pages of documents and rush them to the front of the to-be-translated line? This would be the ultimate, "Hey, boss, I think you better take a look at this!" moment.

I guess the best thing to do now is for CNS to top CBS - to hold on to the originals but make them available to experts for study, and to bring in as many intelligence and Iraqi experts as possible to verify them.

And if they're the real deal... well, it's a whole new ballgame from Washington to Fallujah.

UPDATE: Many readers ask, if the documents are in Arabic, how are U.S. forces an analysts supposed to know that these particular pages are the important ones among the thousands that they are translating? Well, where were the documents found? If they're from a significant site, like a hidden safe or something, that would appear to suggest they were important. The CNSNews.com article also states, the memos were from the Iraqi Intelligence Service and labeled "Top secret, personal and urgent."

CNSNews.com says they were provided the documents by "a senior government official who is not a political appointee."

Like I said at the top of this post, CNSNews.com has a fine reputation. But they're not exactly the top of the media food chain, and their report will be dismissed by a certain segment of the public as a "crazy right-wing web site." Was there no other media outlet that this senior government official could have contacted? (COUGHnationalreviewCOUGH)

I understand some NR folks are looking into this story. Maybe they and a bunch of other outlets will have their own experts look at the documents, and declare them the real deal. As a guy who wants to see American intelligence vindicated, I hope this happens. But - for the second time today - we can't be CBS. We can't let our desire for something to be true affect our conclusion of whether it is true.

Three, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuge out of the aluminum tubes in question.

(10-03) 14:05 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sunday defended her characterization of Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities in the months before the Iraq invasion, even as a published report said government experts had cast doubt at the time.

In the run-up to the March 2003 war, Rice said in a television interview in 2002 that the Iraqi president was trying to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes to rebuild his nuclear weapons program. The tubes, she said, were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs."

On Sunday, Rice acknowledged she was aware of a debate within the U.S. intelligence community about whether the tubes were intended for nuclear weapons. "I knew that there was a dispute. I actually didn't really know the nature of the dispute," Rice told ABC's "This Week."

"The intelligence community assessment as a whole was that these (tubes) were likely and certainly suitable for, and likely for, his nuclear weapons program," Rice said. She said the director of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, believed that the tubes were for centrifuge parts.

"When you are faced with an assessment that Saddam Hussein is reconstituting his nuclear weapons program, that he has by the end of the decade the probability of having a nuclear weapon ... the tendency is always not to want to underestimate these programs," Rice said.

But two years later, Rice insisted she has no regrets about how the administration portrayed what it believed was a dangerous threat posed by Saddam.

"I stand by to this day the correctness of the decision to take seriously an intelligence assessment that Saddam Hussein would likely have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade" if action wasn't taken.

Joe Republican wrote:

As I stated above, the IAEA will naturally continue further to scrutinize and investigate all of the above issues.

After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.

Even if that were true which it isn't, a nuclear program would be the ONLY thing which Saddam Hussein wasn't up to...

Joe Republican wrote:

Three, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuge out of the aluminum tubes in question.

In Hussein's position, an intelligent person would see to it that no tubes entered Iraq which anybody could even suspect were part of a nuclear weaponry program.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/10/03/national1124EDT0444.DTL

Read up on the whole tube issue, the Senate Intellegence Committe and the UN BOTH said they were NOT for uranium, they were for small rocketry which SH was allowed to have!!! You see, if you would have investigated the matter further, you would have found out the the tubes were roughly under half the size needed for nuclear weapons and would have understood that both the UN and the rest of the world KNEW THIS!!!!

If Hussein was not up to anything illicit, what were all the billions of dollars in bribes and all the underhanded dealings with weapons inspectors and other UN oficials for?

Quote:

Read up on the whole tube issue, the Senate Intellegence Committe and the UN BOTH said they were NOT for uranium, they were for small rocketry which SH was allowed to have!!! You see, if you would have investigated the matter further, you would have found out the the tubes were roughly under half the size needed for nuclear weapons and would have understood that both the UN and the rest of the world KNEW THIS!!!!

It's not obvious to me that there's any sort of minimum size for centrifuge tubes and this one is still highly questionable.

Basic bottom line is that you're trying to claim that Hussein was absolutely not up to anything nefarious and that simply does not compute. If Hussein was not up to anything illicit, what were all the billions of dollars in bribes and all the underhanded dealings with weapons inspectors and other UN oficials for? Wouldn't he have been better of simply pocketing the money.

How much money have YOU simply donated to the UN in the last twelve years??

THE STATE OF THE URANIUM
Feds ruled out tubes as part of program
Bush asserted aluminum gear tied to Saddam's nuke-weapons ambitions

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: July 22, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern


By Paul Sperry
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON - Declassified portions of a top-secret intelligence report reveal both the State and Energy departments ruled out the possibility deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein sought high-strength aluminum tubing for the development of nuclear weapons.

The 81 mm tubes were a key component of President Bush's charge that Iraq was "reconstituting" its nuclear weapons program.

Energy "assesses that the tubes probably are not part of the program," states the declassified summary, or "key judgments," of the still-secret National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE. The 90-page report was prepared last October by the U.S. intelligence community.

State's intelligence branch, known as the INR, agreed.

"INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment," page 5 of the report says. And it "finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose."

Less than a week after the report was circulated, however, Bush nonetheless insisted in a key Iraq speech in Cincinnati that the tubes "are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

gungasnake wrote:

If Hussein was not up to anything illicit, what were all the billions of dollars in bribes and all the underhanded dealings with weapons inspectors and other UN oficials for?

gangasnake,

I'm really interested in further info about the billions in bribes and weapons inspector dealings. Could you post some links so I can learn more?

Thanks

I NEVER stated that Hussen was anything but an evil dictator...