Craven de Kere wrote:To be fair the lack of information on this came from the top down.
gozmo wrote:Is that because the information the top had was not inducive to support of the venture?
Well, there's
this, today:
Quote:U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities.
Nelson, D-Fla., said about 75 senators got that news during a classified briefing before last October's congressional vote authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nelson voted in favor of using military force.
This stretches the administration's lies about WMDs to new lengths.
Quote:Nelson said the senators were told Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones.
"They have not found anything that resembles an UAV that has that capability," Nelson said.
* * *
"That's news," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington, D.C.-area military and intelligence think tank. "I had not heard that that was the assessment of the intelligence community. I had not heard that the Congress had been briefed on this."
Of course, anyone paying attention (as well as most of the CIA, DIA, and State Department) knew these claims to be baloney. That's why this briefing came from the Pentagon (probably Rummy's secret intelligence shop), and not one of the intelligence agencies that had repeatedly warned that this "intelligence" was flawed.
At the end it's obvious that they just made stuff up. Pure fantasy.
Quote:Pike said any UAVs Iraq might have had would have had a range of only several hundred kilometers, enough to hit targets in the Middle East but not the United States. To hit targets on the East Coast, such drones would have to be launched from a ship in Atlantic. He said it wasn't out of the question for Iraq to have secretly acquired a tramp steamer from which such vehicles could have been launched.
"The notion that someone could launch a missile from a ship off our shores has been on Rummy's mind for years," Pike said, referring to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Like I said. Bull-oney.
Does everyone remember Bush flying around the country last October campaigning for Republican Congressional candidates repeating this lie at every stop?
Quote:"He's got weapons of mass destruction!" He's got 'em...He's used 'em!"
Are you one of the people that still believes we're going to find WMDs buried in the desert of Iraq that could've been used against us "in 45 minutes", as the President said?
If you are, then vote for Bush and the Republicans next fall.
I'm sure they will take good care of you.
