george
Seems, Turkey belongs to Europe. Mybe, the USA will get here as well.
:wink:
lola
Last Sunday - and that's the last I could find [newer than your link, anyway] - Blair said: Mr Blair: "Over the coming weeks and months we will assemble this evidence and then we will give it to people." [re. weapons, and labs in special]
Regarding the 1,500 and more "sure" places ....
a
Data failed to back Bush over WMD, officials say
Knight Ridder News
WASHINGTON -- President Bush and his top aides made prewar claims about Iraq's weapons programs that weren't always backed up by available U.S. intelligence and painted a threatening picture that was far starker than what American spies knew, according to current and former intelligence officials and a review of available documents.
Bush and other White House officials also publicly cited evidence -- particularly on Iraq's suspected nuclear-weapons program and ties with terrorists -- that on closer examination turned out to be false or debatable.
Senior defense officials confirmed Friday that a report by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency last September expressed significant doubts about whether Saddam Hussein was producing and stockpiling chemical and biological weapons, as Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell all claimed.
"There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent-production facilities," said portions of the report made available to Knight Ridder.
Da scoop
So we were talking, and my friend said "Do you know what really bugs me about the Weapons of Mass Destruction thing? I believed Powell, I really did. And you know what doubter I am."
He really is. More than me.
He went on:
"After the things he, meaning Powell, said right after Labor Day weekend last year and the UN show, I said 'Okay, he's really dangerous, meaning Saddam, let's go get'em.' I wasn't happy about it, but the thought of little Iraqi bugbomb factories mixing up gallons of that fugging stuff scared me a little, okay, a lot."
I think that's what they were trying to do, scare you.
"Well, didn't you believe him, Powell, I mean, I mean, I never believe anything those other creeps say, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld and Chaney, that bunch of fugging whatevers, and Bush is still the biggest kissass on the planet only now he does his act in front of all of us. He always looks like he is about to read his book report to the class, doesn't he? But I believed Powell, he I thought was straight."
We sipped our drinks.
"You know what I think."
No.
"I think if I was Colin Powell, I would resign."
"I think if I was Colin Powell, I would resign."
I'll drink to that ......
Ironically, the one Shrub appointment in whom i had any confidence. I will say, and think threads here prove it, that i wasn't buyin' his snake oil about Iraq from the day one. What a sad case.
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - What goes around comes around, muses chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix.
Months after pulling the plug on his inconclusive inspections in Iraq and declaring war, the United States and Britain are now asking for patience as they hunt for still- elusive weapons of mass destruction.
"They did not have patience for that (prolonged U.N. inspections)," Blix said in a telephone interview broadcast Friday on Colombian radio.
"However, of course what I notice now is that when the American inspectors do not find anything, then it is suggested we should have patience."
The United States and Britain justified their invasion of Iraq partly on the existence of chemical, biological and possibly even nuclear weapons - using intelligence data that is now being increasingly questioned.
Blix, who fielded U.N. inspection teams from Nov. 27, 2002, to March 18, said the jury was still out whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein claimed the weapons were destroyed in 1991. Blix has said the last significant discoveries by inspectors were in 1994.
I think Colin Powell should resign, too....in protest. And then he can run for president as a conservative dem.
Good post, Dys. There have been comments by those who should know that it is likely that all of Iraq's weapons, chemical or otherwise, were destroyed (or sold?) between 1991 and 1999.
from CNN Law Center:
"(FindLaw) -- President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a joint resolution authorizing the use of U.S. military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake -- acts of war against another nation.
Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away -- unless, perhaps, they start another war.
That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.
Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.
How depressing the Powell story is here. Had he resigned pre-war, as Keisling had done, and had he done so publicly with a forthright and principled explanation of the reasons, as Keisling had done, Powell would now be seen - correctly - as a figure of unusual American heroism, an example of the best that American democracy and freedom has to offer to the world.
And that is a reflection of an even greater tragedy. The world, with the cold war over, sat on the cusp of immense and unique potential. And America turned a particular corner - militarism, bullying, arrogance, the insular and exclusionary 'us versus them' doctrine, the anti-democratic attack on citizens who argued.
But it reveals something important - all the internal forces which determined this present course and which have brought to the surface much of the very worst of the American psyche and its presence in the world - those things are the real enemy.
A word of caution...Carl Rove is not stupid. Nor does he appear to be governed by principle other than 'win at any cost'. And we know that Bush himself, and those advising/directing him are quite prepared to as deceitful and manipulative as they need to be to achieve their ends ('Mayberry Machiavelli's', in the words of Dilulio).
What better scenario, as the election draws near, than to have Bush and his administration the victims of a mounting attack from inside the country and from outside the country on this singular point of no WOMD, and then, to have all the critics proved wrong with a big find just a few months before the polls?
I'd like to see Powell outta there, but I mean out. No candidacy. He'll wind up on plenty corporate boards to keep him in clover. I don't have the same lingering respect for him that many do -- sorrow maybe, but I hope very much that the exemption of Powell from complicity has a strong basis in his actions.
Karl Rove is certainly not stupid and we can expect a wall of plausible deniability built around Bush (it's happening already in the implications that Bush "may have been given false intelligence"). What would guarantee Bush a second term would be an admission: Yes, we did look at these reports and we made our own conclusions In Order To Defend The Country, etc. etc. We Lied To Save You. Alcoholics don't go in for this kind of palliative measure, but is ROVE an alcoholic?
Tartarin
Clearly, the spin already in motion is 'intelligence failure' leading to an understandable decision to trust the intelligence people and go to war - better safe than sorry, and look at how free the iraqis are now.
But if the present dynamic continues, and continues to grow - that is, where the administration's culpability for pushing intelligence communities towards a desired finding is the point of concentration - then a different strategy may be required to ensure electoral victory.
Where did you say one would find the more temperate climate north of the border, Blatham?
There is no question that it is right outside my door. Today, a cool breeze off the ocean with temperature likely to reach 85. I'm working today, but tomorrow the kayak gets tossed on my shoulder and I'll walk the two blocks to the bay, paddle quietly down to the farmer's market for breakfast, then spend a few hours circumnavigating the city and park. This winter, by the way, we had less snowfall than did Dallas.
Any houses for sale in your area?
I'm afraid not. Though condominiums, lovely and uncheap, are to be had.
Under the heading of "those Iraqis just smiled so big when they saw us coming"...
Quote:Iraqis carrying hammers and axes yesterday began to demolish a police station in the troubled city of Falluja in a public act of defiance against the US military.
"That attack was a warning to the Americans," said Arkan Habib, 32, who stood in the rubble of the station yesterday.
"We have told them more than once that this is a residential area and we don't want them here. We have destroyed the walls, we took the windows and now we are going to destroy the whole building," he said. "We are cleansing the place of Americans."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,972483,00.html
