The truth is oozing out like a slime trail

The UN inspectors were restricted from many secret areas of Iraq throughout the search. The weapons program was a threat to us and the rest of the world (Europe, Israel, the Middle East, Russia, etc, etc, etc). Saddam could have easily sold weapons to terrorists. Were you willing to trust the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein? I sure wasn't, and neither was the US government and most Americans.


The polls before the war showed that most people supported the war, and there was a huge majority supporting the war once it got started. I think everybody knew that Saddam needed to be dealt with all along, but they just weren't sure about the military.


We did not go to war based on this one piece of intelligence! To claim that we did is just ridiculous! We have known for more than a decade that Saddam possessed WMD, and we have known for a long time that his regime treated the Iraqi people horribly.


The Patriot Act, among other things, is effective in preventing terrorism. Say what you will about political correctness, but keep in mind that we have not had a terror attack since 9/11.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

James Madison, The Federalist Papers (#47)

Assuming that Saddam had ready-made WMD's available for terrorists, was he the only one? What ever happened to the worry about all the left-over uranium/plutonium from the former USSR? What about the other countries that are known to have at least the materials for WMD's, if not the weapons themselves?




So far, no WMD's. Yeah, he treated the Iraqi citizens horribly, but like a lot of other people have asked, if that's reason to start a war, when are we going to attack China, Saudi Arabia, etc.? And what about the excuse (and I think I even remember hearing about "official proof") that he was supporting Al Quaida? Well, that's been officially debunked this week, too.



9/11 came six years after the OKC bombing -- who says a terrorist attack has to fall under a certain time period? And who says that it's always going to be an Arab (again, look at OKC).

eugene-To say that we didnt go to war based on the "16 words" is typical reconstruction of history. It was not the sole reason but, if we were to put it to a vote in congress today, absent the WMD assurances we were getting by the administration, I feel we wouldnt have seen the vote go the Pres way.
WMD issue has been back pedalled so much that its almost comical. i listen to rush , (I like how he spins things, its entertaining). He was assuring his audience how we didnt go to war based on WMDs. why then did Bush, Rice, powell, etc give individual speeches that stressed the Imminence of these weapons.
The Union of Concerned Scientists had published a " Lets get real" posting about how the immediate threat from Nukes was pretty much a bullshit issue. totally fabricated.
The tuth of tthe matter is that Uranium has to go through a series of processing steps to become weapons grade. and each step leaves a mark of relict radioactivit5y that can be detected by very crude means.
The "yellow cake" is merely a first processing from ore to an oxide of Vanadium and Uranium. Its a yellow and red mixture that then gets separated and put into barrels . This stuff is easily spotted from airborne scintillation detectors. The crap is shipped by water and unloaded at a p[ort. what port has the special handling capability to deal with yellow cake. /
Then the entire haul has to be converted to Uranium hexaflouride which is then enriched by only 2 means, either gas centrifuging (thats why the aluminum tubes crap), or else gas diffusion. Either of these 3 processes leaves a big regional rad fingerprint.
The point is , neither the UN, nor our own people have detected this. In an analogy , finding processing facilities without previous knowledge in a large land mass as big as California, would be as easy as finding a heretofore unknown city like , say San Francisco.
My point is that , from my 30 years in the rare earth and nucke industry, THIS WAS A LIE FROM THE GETGO. The war hawks came into office with a huge hard-on for a war with IRAQ and everything theyve done has led them to this. 9/11 was a mere additional justification on their list.
If you say that IRAQ was just being extra clean in the way they handled the processed U-Oxide and their enrichment was carried out in ultra clean and secret facilities. I say BULLSHIT, The Us gas diffusion plant in Ohio, is so easily detectable from its bank of Rad species that the Russians know when were beneficiating and on which shifts. AT our processing plants in Colorado and trigger plant in Texas, we discharge waste water that is classified top secret because the mixtures of hevy elements and radioactive elements lets anyone who does this know that were making triggers or balls of light end uranium hexaflouride compounds.
The technical knowledge to make a bomb is not very difficult and the process is rather dirty, leaving prints that can be picked up from the air.

So, "looking for the nuclear WMDs" was really more like a huge international snipe hunt. The UCS made this point (sort of) in a weak position statement in Feb. It was a big debate among my colleagues. We generally agreed, that, if U Oxide was being sent to IRAQ, we could, eith a team of trainable high school students and a reasonable budget, find the yellow cake and enriched uranium processing facilities in about 30 days tops. (Most of that time period was merely for delays in getting planes and helicopters aloft)

My experience isnt unique, I was, I must say, originally a supporter of the war , mostly because of the 9/11 and WMD inferences. The mantra by the admin was that Saddam could hoist a full WMD invasion in a few hours. THIS was a fact Jack. Noone can deny that such rhetoric was noit being forwarded. Our troops were being outfitted for gas and tactical nukes. The media was being spun stories about "suitcase nukes"
If you deny this then I now understand how the Holocaust deniers get their steam.

By early March 2003, many of us knew that this was a complete and cynical fabrication by a cynically manipulative administration.
I had given GWB an immense amount of personal slack and was caught up in the swell of support for him following 9/11. NOW, that entire stance has been reevaluated in light of all these recent lies, and deceptions.
THIS CREW HAS GOTTA GO , ThYERE BAD NEWS

Ill debate my stance with anyone who feels compelled to back the WMD story as truth, because youll lose. I can dig up links (if you wish to read ) about how the processing of uranium works, and youll see that most of the administartions position on this matter was a huge fairy tale, cynically developed for the consumption by the public most of whom are ignorant of the forensics in tracking nukes.

Sorry Ive unloaded on you eugene but the recreation of the "truth" by The administrations apologists just finally got to me and, since Im on Vacation, Ive got nothing pressing on my mind , so Im redy to debate what we knew, when we knew it, and how stupid does Bush think we are.

eugene-The Patriot Act isnt responsible for anything. Youre taking credit for the sunrise here. The publication of the 9/11 report this past week stated emphatically that, although there was no smoking gun to make any agency culpable for the lapse of intelligence, ther is an ongoing problem with efficiency and information sharing.There were, and are, major problems that can be exploited by terrorists, should they wish to cause us harm again. Remember, the WTC was hit twice. Almost 10 years apart. The institutions of surveillance were asleep and in-fighting all through this period. I feel , that our next president should have a major platform issue of HOW he(she) is going to address terrorism and institutionalize the programs needed to accomplish this. I think Bush needs to be returned to pasture just to show our resolve that , it happened on his watch and hes still jerkin us around like a bunch of veal cattle.

In my words
The FBI and CIA, DIA, NSA(etc) dont suffer from a lack of good leadership, instaed, they suffer from an overabundance of bad leadership.
AND, the guy in charge has gotta go. Hes too busy trying to impress us with a staff that is still made up of pre 9/11 types with a mindset on IRAQ , and thats their only trick.

farmerman is right.

If the arguments for war had been made without the distortions and outright lies -- more than likely there would not have been nearly enough support for this adventure to come close to getting it off the ground.

Why won't you people revising history acknowledge that?

Farmerman
Farmerman, thank you for layout out the technical details of uranium tracking. The trail you describe is exactly how the US recently found the site of the latest "secret" second North Korean processing plant from the sky.

I'm afraid the vast majority of Americans are ignorant when it comes to such issues. The people who I hold most responsible are elected representatives. They make most of their decisions based on two priorities: maintaining power and control by their political parties and getting reelected to the offices they hold. Most of their decisions are rarely made based on what is best for the entire country, not just their rich cronies who finance their reelection. It is a rare moment when politicians of both parties stand up to their leaders and do the right thing.

I blame the stupid electorate who vote like sheep on hot-button emotional social issues over which the government has little control, and not what is in their own best interests and the common good.

Remember that Jefferson was right when he said that a viable democracy is based on an educated and knowledgeable electorate. Today, Jefferson would be very worried.

---BumbleBeeBoogie

Rice is in big trouble: Iraq Flap Shakes Rice's Image
washingtonpost.com
Iraq Flap Shakes Rice's Image
Controversy Stirs Questions of Reports Unread, Statements Contradicted
By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers - Sunday, July 27, 2003; Page A01

Just weeks ago, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, made a trip to the Middle East that was widely seen as advancing the peace process. There was speculation that she would be a likely choice for secretary of state, and hopes among Republicans that she could become governor of California and even, someday, president.

But she has since become enmeshed in the controversy over the administration's use of intelligence about Iraq's weapons in the run-up to war. She has been made to appear out of the loop by colleagues' claims that she did not read or recall vital pieces of intelligence. And she has made statements about U.S. intelligence on Iraq that have been contradicted by facts that later emerged.

The remarks by Rice and her associates raise two uncomfortable possibilities for the national security adviser. Either she missed or overlooked numerous warnings from intelligence agencies seeking to put caveats on claims about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, or she made public claims that she knew to be false.

Most prominent is her claim that the White House had not heard about CIA doubts about an allegation that Iraq sought uranium in Africa before the charge landed in Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 28; in fact, her National Security Council staff received two memos doubting the claim and a phone call from CIA Director George J. Tenet months before the speech. Various other of Rice's public characterizations of intelligence documents and agencies' positions have been similarly cast into doubt.

"If Condi didn't know the exact state of intel on Saddam's nuclear programs . . . she wasn't doing her job," said Brookings Institution foreign policy specialist Michael E. O'Hanlon. "This was foreign policy priority number one for the administration last summer, so the claim that someone else should have done her homework for her is unconvincing."

Rice declined to be interviewed for this article. NSC officials said each of Rice's public statements is accurate. "It was and is the judgment of the intelligence community that Saddam Hussein was attempting to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program," said Michael Anton, an NSC spokesman.

Still, a person close to Rice said that she has been dismayed by the effect on Bush. "She knows she did badly by him, and he knows that she knows it," this person said.

In the White House briefing room on July 18, a senior administration official, speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity, said Rice did not read October's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, the definitive prewar assessment of Iraq's weapons programs by U.S. intelligence agencies. "We have experts who work for the national security adviser who would know this information," the official said when asked if Rice had read the NIE. Referring to an annex raising doubts about Iraq's nuclear program, the official said Bush and Rice "did not read footnotes in a 90-page document. . . . The national security adviser has people that do that." The annex was boxed and in regular type.

Four days later, Rice's deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, said in a second White House briefing that he did not mention doubts raised by the CIA about an African uranium claim Bush planned to make in an October speech (the accusation, cut from that speech, reemerged in Bush's State of the Union address). Hadley said he did not mention the objections to Rice because "there was no need." Hadley said he does not recall ever discussing the matter with Rice, suggesting she was not aware that the sentence had been removed.

Hadley said he could not recall discussing the CIA's concerns about the uranium claim, which was based largely on British intelligence. He said a second memo from the CIA protesting the claim was sent to Rice, but "I can't tell you she read it. I can't tell you she received it." Rice herself used the allegation in a January op-ed article.

One person who has worked with Rice describes as "inconceivable" the claims that she was not more actively involved. Indeed, subsequent to the July 18 briefing, another senior administration official said Rice had been briefed immediately on the NIE -- including the doubts about Iraq's nuclear program -- and had "skimmed" the document. The official said that within a couple of weeks, Rice "read it all."

Bush aides have made clear that Rice's stature is undiminished in the president's eyes. The fault is one of a process in which speech vetting was not systematic enough, they said. "You cannot have a clearance process that depends on the memory of people who are bombarded with as much information, as much paperwork, as many meetings, as many phone calls," one official said. "You have to make sure everybody, each time, actually reads the documents. And if it's a presidential speech, it has to be done at the highest levels."

Democrats, however, see a larger problem with Rice and her operation. "If the national security adviser didn't understand the repeated State Department and CIA warnings about the uranium allegation, that's a frightening level of incompetence," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), who as the ranking Democrat on the Government Reform Committee has led the charge on the intelligence issue. "It's even more serious if she knew and ignored the intelligence warnings and has deliberately misled our nation. . . . In any case it's hard to see why the president or the public will have confidence in her office."

Rice, a former Stanford University provost who developed a close bond with Bush during the campaign, was one of the most outspoken administration voices arguing that Saddam Hussein posed a nuclear danger to the world. As administration hard-liners worked to build support for war throughout the fall and winter, Rice often mentioned the fear that Hussein would develop a nuclear weapon, saying on CNN on Sept. 8: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Now that U.S. forces have not turned up evidence of an active nuclear program in Iraq, the White House is being barraged with allegations from abroad, and from Democrats on Capitol Hill and on the presidential trail, that Bush and his aides exaggerated their evidence. Rice, who is responsible for the White House's foreign policy apparatus, is the official responsible for how the president and his aides present intelligence to the public.

When the controversy intensified earlier this month with a White House admission of error, Rice was the first administration official to place responsibility on CIA Director Tenet for the inclusion in Bush's State of the Union address of the Africa uranium charge. The White House now concedes that pinning responsibility on Tenet was a costly mistake. CIA officials have since made clear to the White House and to Congress that intelligence agencies had repeatedly tried to wave the White House off the allegation.

The main issue is whether Rice knew that U.S. intelligence agencies had significant doubts about a claim made by British intelligence that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. "The intelligence community did not know at that time or at levels that got to us that this, that there was serious questions about this report," she said on ABC's "This Week" on June 8. A month later, on CBS's "Face the Nation," she stood by the claim. "What I knew at the time is that no one had told us that there were concerns about the British reporting. Apparently, there were. They were apparently communicated to the British."

As it turns out, the CIA did warn the British, but it also raised objections in the two memos sent to the White House and a phone call to Hadley. Hadley last Monday blamed himself for failing to remember these warnings and allowing the claim to be revived in the State of the Union address in January. Hadley said Rice, who was traveling, "wants it clearly understood that she feels a personal responsibility for not recognizing the potential problem presented by those 16 words."

In a broader matter, Rice claimed publicly that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR, did not take issue with other intelligence agencies' view that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. "[W]hat INR did not take a footnote to is the consensus view that the Iraqis were actively trying to pursue a nuclear weapons program, reconstituting and so forth," she said on July 11, referring to the National Intelligence Estimate. Speaking broadly about the nuclear allegations in the NIE, she said: "Now, if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president, or to me."

In fact, the INR objected strongly. In a section referred to in the first paragraph of the NIE's key judgments, the INR said there was not "a compelling case" and said the government was "lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program."

Some who have worked in top national security jobs in Republican and Democratic administrations support Rice aides' contention that the workload is overwhelming. "The amount of information that's trying to force itself in front of your attention is almost inhuman," one former official said. Another former NSC official said national security advisers often do not read all of the dozens of NIEs they get each year.

Still, these former officials said they would expect a national security adviser to give top priority to major presidential foreign policy speeches and an NIE about an enemy on the eve of a war. "It's implausible that the national security adviser would be too busy to pay attention to something that's going to come out of the president's mouth," said one. Another official called it highly unlikely that Rice did not read a memo addressed to her from the CIA. "I don't buy the bit that she didn't see it," said this person, who is generally sympathetic to Rice.

In Rice's July 11 briefing, on Air Force One between South Africa and Uganda, she said the CIA and the White House had "some discussion" on the Africa uranium sentence in Bush's State of the Union address. "Some specifics about amount and place were taken out," she said. Asked about how the language was changed, she replied: "I'm going to be very clear, all right? The president's speech -- that sentence was changed, right? And with the change in that sentence, the speech was cleared. Now, again, if the agency had wanted that sentence out, it would have gone. And the agency did not say that they wanted that speech out -- that sentence out of the speech. They cleared the speech. Now, the State of the Union is a big speech, a lot of things happen. I'm really not blaming anybody for what happened."

Three days later, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Rice told him she was not referring to the State of the Union address, as she had indicated, but to Bush's October speech. That explanation, however, had a flaw: The sentence was removed from the October speech, not cleared.

In addition, testimony by a CIA official before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence two days after Fleischer's clarification was consistent with the first account Rice had given. The CIA official, Alan Foley, said he told a member of Rice's staff, Robert Joseph, that the CIA objected to mentioning a specific African country -- Niger -- and a specific amount of uranium in Bush's State of the Union address. Foley testified that he told Joseph of the CIA's problems with the British report and that Joseph proposed changing the claim to refer generally to uranium in Africa.

White House communications director Dan Bartlett last Monday called that a "conspiracy theory" and said Joseph did not recall being told of any concerns.

Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.

Farmer -- Thanks for your detailed and knowledgeable posts! Most welcome. Last week I heard (and reported on in these pages) a discussion on NPR among military men and scientists in which everything you say about yellowcake was indeed their main theme. Though they didn't mention a "San Francisco," they did say that it was well-known to the Bush administration that the Iraqis didn't have the capacity to turn yellowcake into anything remotely useful. It was public knowledge. Insistence on this fact was one of the main reasons the administration tried to discredit El Baradei.

If one were to go back and listen to the long debate in the Security Council (I listened to every word), you can hear each representative say (bar the few who stood with the US) that the US was basing its case on "facts" which were widely known to be lies, one dang lie after another.

It's uncanny that the admin can (or thinks it can) get away with simply overriding common knowledge and telling lies. The louder you shout, the more often you repeat it, the truer it gets? As I've said before, it reminds me of the rude tourist in a foreign country who thinks that if he shouts English loudly enough, everyone will understand him.

I'm beginning to get frustrated not just with the idjits who have taken up the sword for Bush in these discussion -- who believe that if they peat and re-peat the lies often enough, we will cave in -- but with all of us who keep responding to their peats and re-peats as though they make sense. Why don't we stop using our energies on this? Why don't we just say, in effect, been there, done that: Bush lies. Bumble is right about getting the word out. That's where the real work lies.

Of course, Eugene could prove me wrong by saying, Lawdy, thank you all, I see the light!, giving credit to Farmer and others who've patiently laid out the facts.

Bumble -- That Pincus article was mentioned this morning on NPR and I was delighted to find it here. Thanks! It's even more damning than I thought it would be!

Gee, here I am in Texas enjoying summer weather which is breezy, not hot, and utterly delicious, a new car, and a realization that armageddon may take place in the White House and environs rather than world-wide! Hope everyone else is having a nice day too!

I'd like to add this smelly turd to the administration's steaming pile:

Payments for Perle
by ARI BERMAN
[from the August 18, 2003 issue]

An odd thing happened in February when a European television station approached Richard Perle for an interview. Millions of antiwar protesters had rocked the globe a week prior, and the station badly wanted Perle, as chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board, to articulate the Pentagon's Iraq policy. But Perle, as he continues to do today, demanded a fee. Though startled by the request, the news station violated its strict no-pay policy for interviews and obliged the chairman.

The station's experience was not unique. During and after his chairmanship, Perle used his insider status to demand fees for appearances on a number of foreign broadcasts, which included British, Canadian, Japanese and South Korean television. While paying interviewees is common practice in some countries, a number of media outlets made exceptions for Perle. "We did pay Perle because of his position [in a] prominent advisorship to the Secretary of Defense," says a European correspondent who, like most journalists interviewed, requested anonymity because of network discomfort at publicly discussing payment policies. Fees ranged from under $100 to $900--minor sums to someone like Perle, but federal regulations covering officials in his capacity make no distinctions based on amount.

Nor is this the first assertion of dubious dealings by Perle. In the past few months, The New Yorker and the New York Times have both raised serious questions about whether Perle has used his government post for private gain.

Perle heatedly denied suggestions of impropriety regarding the broadcast payments. "There is no law, regulation or ethics guideline that would preclude my being compensated for articles, speeches or interviews," he said. "When I agreed to serve on the Defense Policy Board I agreed to its rules and I abide by them. I couldn't care less how many of your left wing friends you can quote, by name or anonymously, in support of standards of conduct that would be far more restrictive than anything in the current rules and regulations."

According to the Pentagon, all thirty members of the Defense Policy Board--which advises the Defense Secretary--though unpaid, are considered "special government employees" (SGE) and are banned from using their public office for private gain. Meetings are confidential, and board members obtain classified intelligence, receive security clearances and file internal financial disclosures that only the Defense Department views.

Several current or past officials with knowledge of the Defense Policy Board raise concerns about Perle's requests for payment. "It's naïve to say [TV stations] weren't more interested in Perle because he was chairman," says Barry Blechman, a Democratic appointee to the board. "If [TV] says we want the chairman and from that basis he wanted a fee, it would be prohibited." Blechman also notes that "it would never occur to me to charge for interviews." Harold Brown, another member of the board and former Defense Secretary under President Jimmy Carter, said Perle was "monetizing his reputation." Larry Korb--an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan and now director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations--labeled Perle's actions "a problem."

Though a sympathizer has described Perle as "not a financial creature," a correspondent says that when he approached Perle's assistant for an interview he was immediately asked, "Do you know there's a fee?"

In some of his past interviews on television, Perle attempted to skirt legal problems by declaring that he was appearing as a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Often though, he has discarded that disclaimer. Regardless of how Perle presents himself, journalists say that he is paid because of his working knowledge of Pentagon strategy. "When we break the rules, it's for heavy-hitting individuals like Richard Perle," a Japanese news producer explains.

A typical Perle appearance came on April 4, 2003, on Canadian Television's morning news show, Canada AM, for which--according to a CTV news producer--Perle was paid $900. The host introduced Perle as a lead architect of Iraq policy and "one of the closest advisers of Donald Rumsfeld and a member of the influential Defense Policy Board." In the interview, Perle described the war in Iraq as certain to be "a quick war by any standards" and asserted that "we will find weapons of mass destruction when the people who know where they are are free to talk to us." On May 29 he was invited back and was paid for discussing Bush's Middle East policy.

Not all international media seemed comfortable with Perle's juggling act. "Nobody would pay a member of the Defense Policy Board for an interview [in Germany]," says Jan-Cristoph Wiechmann, a correspondent for the German magazine Stern. "It would, in fact, be considered a scandal."

Federal laws place restrictions on the behavior of SGEs like Perle. Regulations Code 5 CFR 2635.702--barring the use of public office for private gain--also warns of the "appearance of government sanction," and cautions against using public standing "in a manner that could be reasonably construed to imply that his agency or the Government sanctions or endorses his personal activities." Section 5 CFR 2635.807 bans SGEs from receiving money for speaking on matters in which the SGE "has participated or is participating personally and substantially" for the government. "Experts have to make a livelihood," a government ethics specialist explained, "but they're prohibited...if there's a nexus between public and private."
Perle's high-profile articulation of Administration strategy blurs this line. Before the Iraq war, members of the Defense Policy Board acted as unofficial spokesmen for the Pentagon, with Perle charging networks while aggressively promoting the DOD stance. "It's misleading to be charging money [for] selling policy," says Bill Allison of the Center for Public Integrity. "It creates the problem of asking to profit off of your government connection."
Said Perle: "The suggestion that being paid for work I do is somehow an abuse of my role as a member of a government advisory board is the sort of slander I expect from The Nation which, since the collapse of regard for the vision of its founders, and the paucity of ideas to replace it, has been reduced to impugning the character of those whose ideas have prevailed over yours."

Financial controversies are familiar to Perle. In early March in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh exposed how one of his holdings, Trireme Partners, sought to benefit from an Iraq war. A week later, the Times reported that Global Crossing hired Perle to help win Pentagon approval for the telecom company's sale.

Subsequently, Representative John Conyers, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, requested that the DOD's Inspector General investigate Perle's conduct. On March 27 Perle resigned his chairmanship of the board, but he remains a member. The DOD, responding to Conyers's letter, initiated an investigation, promising its findings by July 11. So far, Conyers has heard nothing. "These new revelations about Richard Perle are shocking but not surprising," Conyers told The Nation. "From his involvement with Global Crossing to this new information about speaking fees, Perle has only fueled speculation that he may be using his government position for private financial gain."

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20030818&s=berman

the question on my mind this morning--was that Saudi or Iraqi oil that was used to blot out the 27 pages?

Someone said (I've been cruising around this stuff and not always nabbing links) that the Pages contain references to the "special relationships" of the US Gov with both Saudis and Iraq which are deemed embarrassing to the Saudis a little and to the US a lot.

All of this is documented, lots more in pages that have so far been blacked out (and not only pertaining to the State of the Union address. Watching Rice squirm under Ifels's skillful interrogation was in itself an admission.

But revising history - all this talk now about the importance of going to war to protect Americans (and the threat itself is vague - I have gone back and read so much put out by this admin, and vagueness is the language). How quickly we all forget all those polls put out by major polling places - the Pew Foundation, the Zogby Poll, the CBS/New York Times Poll, and more - in which for the longest time the majority opinion was against taking this country to war. So maybe American aren't altogether sheepish. Maybe we've got swineherds at the top who totally ignore the country's feelings. And maybe that's part of the difficulty now. The people who weren't sold on this are beginning to find a voice, and the response to it is growing weaker. This is as about a venal an administration as we've had, and we've had a long history of them. And the bluster that accompanies these people is one of the things that has allowed them to continue. All the human nature evidence is out there - months and months and we still haven't gathered an ally or a donation (although I understand the Dutch have decided to send troops); the political cartoons and shows are becoming more and more barbed; 46% now feel Bush should be re-elected (sort of pulls that popularity figure into question), and a defensive WH is now busy trying to explain most of its decisions.

It's very difficult for a people to make their own laws, when its government is delibeately misleading them for its own ends. But in the end, the Greeks had the right word for it - hubris.

Amen.

Not to try and simplify things, but the administration are bullies. THey bully the world,and they bully the American people. Youare "With us, or with the terrorists (Bush)," "I would advise against criticizing the administraion, if you know what's good for you (Fleischer to the NY Times WH correspondent)," "This kind of talk is a danger to the American war effort (Rumsfeld responding to questions about the whereabouts of bin-Laden and the questionable ties of al-Quaeda to Iraq.)."
On other, less civil forums, those who question the administration are referred to as "un-American", or "un-patriotic." and are told that they do not "deserve" to live in the US. I had an 18 y.o. Freshman (!) in my section of Western Civ II tell me that I should be arrested because I made a joke about Bush' pronunciation of the word "nuclear." I was also accosted several times in the immediate aftermath of 11th September and told to "go back to where you came from, "etc...( considering I am a US citizen,and served in the U.S. Army in both Desert Storm and Somalia, I found this a little disheartening...)
The red-meat eating, beer-guzzling, WWF watching, xenophobic trends in the American psyche seem to be the ones being rewarded nowadays. I find this very, very frightening! I also honestly wonder if this portion of the American public won't rise to the top and vote the criminals in for another four years! If so, I don't intend to stay here. Toronto or Vancouver here I come!

I had to re-visit this. I recall an op-ed piece ( that I of course can't find now) that speculates that Bush will declare a state of emergency come November 2004, and declare martial law, cancel elections "for the forseeable future,"and basically have himself appointed president for life. I hate to say it, but that scenario seems less and less unlikely as time passes.

May I out Bush in this thread?
Here's Maureen Dowd's take on Bush in the Sunday Times -- perhaps the much-needed mainstream ridiculing of the man has started?



Butch, Butch Bush!

..."Queer Eye," the summer makeover hit, on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, features five gay guys who swoop in to give the Cinderfella treatment to unexfoliated straight guys, while scattering catty comments about their grooming and decor, such as, "This place screams women's correctional facility."

Maybe we should pity President Bush, stranded in his 50's world of hypermasculinity as his country goes gay and metrosexual (straight men with femme tastes like facials). Even the uptight Wal-Mart stores have expanded antidiscrimination policy to protect gay employees, and Bride's magazine is offering its first feature on same-sex weddings.

Maybe the president and his swaggering circle should think about a "Queer Eye" makeover. I asked a gay political reporter friend if he could offer some tips:

On the vice president: "I'd love to see Cheney with a pierced ear and a diamond stud. Or in a body-hugging black T-shirt, just for the pure sport of it.

"He needs new eyewear. With his big face and lantern jaw, he should lose those five-pound glasses. There are some fabulous frames out there.

"About his hair, all I can offer is my sincere regrets."

On the defense secretary: "In his own sort of antediluvian way, Rummy is a metrosexual. He works. He may be a warmonger, he may be intemperate, but just about every third woman I know wants him."

When it came to the president's possibilities, he got really excited: "Cowboy boots are fine for a certain kind of saucy backyard barbecue. But wearing them as often as he does, with those big belt buckles in the shape of Texas, it seems like he's trying too hard to prove his masculinity.

"He's definitely on the right track with low-stress weight lifting, but if he really wants a physique for the ages, a little yoga would help uncoil that gunslinger hunch.

"His hair is too tightly clipped. It looks painted on. And he's a huge squinter. The corner of his eyes are starting to look lined. Botox alert!

"He needs to dip into the merciful world of cosmetic products and avail himself of some kind of lip balm or gloss that helps mask the fact that he misplaced his lips somewhere.

"In open-collar shirts, he has a tiny little island of lost chest hair. It is too low to be a shaving oversight and too high to be a peripheral outgrowth of Alec Baldwin chest mat. It's neither fish nor fowl, so he should wax it out of there.

"Everything else about him just shouts `Butch, butch, butch!' But to throw Bush a metrosexual bone, whenever you see him walking off Air Force One with that little furball Barney under his arm, that canine puff of air that most drag queens wouldn't be caught dead with, it's like he's halfway to a Chanel rabbit fur handbag.

"Bush does such a good job of seeming blissfully laid back and vacantly bubbly that he might as well go blond. It might help with California's electoral votes, too."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/opinion/03DOWD.html