Bush supporters' aftermath thread

The controversy in America over pre-war intelligence has intensified, with revelations that the Bush administration exaggerated the claims of a key source on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, despite repeated warnings before the invasion that his information was at best dubious, if not downright wrong...

But by summer 2002, his claims had been thrown into grave doubt. Five senior BND officials told the newspaper they warned the CIA that Curveball never claimed to have been involved in germ weapons production, and never saw anyone else do so. His information was mostly vague, secondhand and impossible to confirm, they told the Americans - "watercooler gossip" according to one source.

Nonetheless the CIA would hear none of the doubts. President Bush referred to Curveball's tale in his January 2003 State of the Union address, and the alleged mobile labs were a central claim in the now notorious presentation to the United Nations by Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, in February 2003, making the case for war.

The senior BND officer who supervised Curveball's case said he was aghast when he watched Mr Powell overstate Curveball's case. "We were shocked," he said. "We had always told them it was not proven ... It was not hard intelligence."...

The debacle became complete when American investigators, sent after the invasion to find evidence of the WMDs, instead discovered Curveball's personnel file in Baghdad. It showed he had been a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted. Moreover he had been dismissed in 1995 - just when he claimed to have begun work on bio-warfare trucks....

Why yes, Cicerone, I am still talking about Clinton. And in France, they still talk about Napoleon and in Germany they still talk about Hitler and in Russia they still talk about Gorbachev and in Italy they still talk about Mussolini.

He's been free -- and we know he has -- to continue to improve his chemical weapons capability," Cheney said in the interview, broadcast Monday. "We know he has worked to and has succeeded in improving his biological weapons capability. And we're confident that he has also begun, once again, to try to acquire a nuclear weapon."

He acknowledged in a plea agreement that he and Mr. Abramoff, identified in the court papers as "Lobbyist A," agreed to make lavish gifts to public officials, including all-expense-paid trips to Europe and the Super Bowl, in exchange for official actions.

Investigators are looking at half a dozen members of Congress, current and former senior Hill aides, a former deputy secretary of the interior, and Abramoff's former lobbying colleagues, according to sources familiar with the probe who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Because of his central role in much of Abramoff's business, Scanlon could be a key witness in any trials that arise from the case.

It galls me that Clinton was impeached for a personal sexual indiscretion, while none in this administration that got us into this unjustified war that sees our children and parents killed hasn't been fired or relieved of duty.

It galls me that Clinton was impeached for a personal sexual indiscretion, while none in this administration that got us into this unjustified war that sees our children and parents killed hasn't been fired or relieved of duty.

November 22, 2005
Zarqawi's Bad Week
By Jack Kelly

Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the al Qaida chieftain in Iraq, has had a bad week. If it turns out Zarqawi was among seven al Qaida leaders killed in Mosul Saturday, it'll have been a really bad week. But even if Zarqawi got away again, it's been a rotten week for him. It's also been a bad week for antiwar Democrats, who had their bluff called in the House of Representatives.

Zarqawi's bad week is a product of the suicide bombings he orchestrated November 9th against three hotels in Amman, Jordan. The bombings resulted in 62 deaths, mostly of Arabs attending a wedding. Because of its large Palestinian population, Jordan had been the country most supportive of al Qaida.

No longer. Last Friday, more than 200,000 Jordanians took to the streets to demonstrate against al Qaida. Zarqawi is Jordanian, but his tribe has disowned him.

This is a big deal, said Jim Robbins, who teaches at the National Defense University: "One of the reasons I thought the report of Zarqawi's death was credible at first was that his tribe had forsaken him," Robbins wrote.

"Extended tribal ties among groups in al Anbar province in Iraq may be what has kept him safe thus far." It could have been a tip from a disgruntled relative that led U.S. and Iraqi troops to surround the house in Mosul where seven men and a woman died, several by blowing themselves up. More likely, they were ratted out by Iraqis who had once been friendly to al Qaida, but are turning against it.

There has been a surge in tips from Iraqis over the last month, a U.S. intelligence officer told the Washington Post. "These tend to be traditional Iraqi leaders -- sheiks and imams -- upset with the organization, especially its recent execution of Sunni Arabs in Ramadi," the official said.

Ramadi, the capital of al Anbar province, is a smuggling center that long has been as lawless as Dodge City before Wyatt Earp became marshal. There have been running gun battles betweenlocal insurgents tied to the former regime of Saddam Hussein and al Qaida. There also have been gun battles between al Qaida and U.S. troops in Ramadi, which have gone badly for al Qaida.

Nearly 200 "insurgents," most of them al Qaida members, have been killed or captured in Operation Steel Curtain, now in its second week, a joint Marine-Iraqi operation which has been cleaning out hideouts along the Syrian border.

Zarqawi has lost a number of key lieutenants in recent weeks, thanks to the increasing number and timeliness of tips. The most recent were Abu Ahmed, the "Emir" of Sadah, nabbed on day three of Steel Curtain, and Abu Ibrahim, a technology expert who manufactured triggering devices for roadside bombs, taken in Baghdad Oct. 31st. More of Zarqawi's command network was lost in the house in Mosul, even if he himself got away.

With the walls falling in on al Qaida in Iraq, it would seem a curious time for congressional Democrats to go into preemptive surrender mode. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., introduced a resolution last week calling for "immediate redeployment" of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Murtha, a retired Marine reserve colonel and a decorated Vietnam veteran, is a substantive man. The news media described his resolution as a blow to the Bush administration. "When President Bush decided to wage war on Saddam Hussein, perhaps no Democrat was a firmer ally," wrote Maura Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times. This was untrue. Murtha had expressed doubt about going to war in 2002, and had declared Iraq "unwinnable" in May of last year.

Showing more backbone and more brains than they customarily do, House Republicans called for a vote on immediate withdrawal from Iraq. It failed, 404-3. Democrats who'd applauded the introduction of Murtha's resolution whined it was dirty pool for Republicans to make them vote on his bottom line.

"It's a trap," a Democratic strategist told Newsweek's Eleanor Clift. "If the party comes out for a unilateral six month withdrawal, that would become the issue for 06, and they (Republicans) would kill us again." Democrats like to make antiwar noises for their moonbat base, but were unwilling to cast a vote that could hurt them with swing voters. They were too cowardly to be forthright cowards.

Truth serum for the donkey

By David Limbaugh

Nov 22, 2005

What do Democrat leaders really believe concerning their "Bush lied" mantra? If you were to inject the whole lot of them with truth serum and turn them loose with microphones and recording equipment, here's what you might hear.

"Immediately after 9/11, contrary to our guttural instincts, we conceded we had been attacked by international terrorists. Though they probably had legitimate grievances against us, such as our presence in the Middle East and our unfailing support for Israel, they went too far by attacking civilian targets in New York and Washington, D.C.

"But given our aversion to unsophisticated, black-and-white analyses, our affinity for nuance, our predisposition against recognizing evil in the world, and our inclination toward appeasement, we weren't quite prepared to accept Osama at his word that this had become a global War on Terror (WOT).

"We weren't entirely comfortable attacking Afghanistan because the great Soviet Union became quagmired there and we might further provoke the terrorists, not to mention inflame those little pacifist students in the Saudi-funded madrassas into becoming terrorists and joining the non-global war against us.

"But given the public's post 9/11 passion, we had to get on board against the Taliban. And it's a good thing we did, because we've been able to use that vote to demonstrate we were always hawks in the WOT against the real enemies.

"Indeed, in our intermittent periods of opposition to attacking Iraq, we've pretended President Bush was too intent on making Saddam Hussein a straw party bogeyman in the WOT in order to avenge his father (or was it to steal Saddam's oil?) to keep his eyes on Osama. Sure, our claim was ridiculous, but that was hardly a reason not to make it.

"When confronted with the embarrassing plethora of tapes and transcripts in which we declared Saddam was an imminent threat to the United States, a possessor of WMD, and feverishly hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities, we've told the public to pay no attention to those men behind the curtain.

"Yes, we really did say those things, but we didn't mean them. We had no choice, politically, given the public's overwhelming support for the war, especially since the president called our bluff when we insisted he consult us prior to taking action.

"Instead of just confessing that we were trying to have it both ways, we found a way to reconcile our inconsistent positions -- with yet more inconsistent positions. But we've learned that if you throw enough rubbish out there for public consumption, at the very least you'll confuse the issue enough to establish political cover.

"Consequently, we said that Bush duped us by cherry-picking and exaggerating the intelligence. When GOP nitpickers pointed out we had access to the same intelligence, we alternatively denied it and admitted it, but when admitting it, claimed he had pressured intelligence agencies into doctoring their reports. We know that bipartisan and independent investigators determined otherwise. So sue us!

"We also said that when we voted to give President Bush authority to attack Iraq, which authority was unconditional on its face, we understood that he'd keep exhausting his negotiation avenues.

"Actually, our chutzpah even amazes us sometimes. With straight faces we told the people we 'trusted' President Bush would only attack as a last resort, even though we'd made it clear we wouldn't trust him with his own mother. Though we told them Bush had been secretly planning to attack Iraq since before he was born, we asked them to believe we trusted him not to attack Iraq the first chance he got -- with our formal blessing, no less.

"You may recall that we also tried the ploy of demanding we form a stronger 'multilateral' coalition, all the while doing everything we could to sabotage Bush's efforts to build the coalition by arguing against our own participation."

"After all this chaos we've fomented and with the masterful job we've done in undermining the public's support for the war and trust in President Bush, we still don't have a clue what we should do in Iraq other than to keep attacking the president.

"So we demanded a withdrawal timetable and got shot down in the Senate. And in the House few of us even had the courage to vote consistent with our heated rhetoric.

"Not to worry. The 2008 election is three years off, and that gives us at least two more years of mischief before we have to start coming up with some positive ideas of our own, which won't even be necessary if we're able to pressure Bush into the catastrophic mistake of a precipitous withdrawal.

"So cut us some slack. We're just doing what is in the best interests of the country, which is to hoodwink the people into returning us to power."