Bush "fixed" war.

[#1MavsFan]

WASHINGTON — It started during British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign last month, when details leaked about a top-secret memo, written in July 2002 — eight months before the Iraq war. In the memo, British officials just back from Washington reported that prewar "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" to invade Iraq.

Just last week, both President George W. Bush and Blair vigorously denied that war was inevitable.

“No, the facts were not being fixed, in any shape or form at all,” said Blair at a White House news conference with the president on June 7.

But now, war critics have come up with seven more memos, verified by NBC News.

One, also from July 2002, says U.S. military planners had given "little thought" to postwar Iraq.

“The memos are startlingly clear that the British saw that there was inadequate planning, little planning for the aftermath,” says Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

And there's more. To prepare Blair for a meeting at the president's ranch in April 2002, a year before the war, other British memos raised more questions.

After a dinner with Bush’s then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Blair's former national security adviser David Manning, now Britain's ambassador to the U.S., wondered, “What happens on the morning after” the war?

In yet another 2002 memo, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw asked, “What will this action achieve? Can (there) be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better? Iraq has had no history of democracy.”

Rice, now U.S. secretary of state, told Chris Matthews on MSNBC-TV's “Hardball,” “I would never claim that the exact nature of this insurgency was understood at the time that we went to war.”

Vice President Dick Cheney also told a National Press Club luncheon Monday, “Any suggestion that we did not exhaust all alternatives before we got to that point, I think, is inaccurate.”

In fact, current and former diplomats tell NBC News they understood from the beginning the Bush policy to be that Saddam had to be removed — one way or the other. The only question was when and how.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8207731

Doesn't suprise me at all.

[FishForLunch]

Vote him out in 2008 then

[Drbio]

Originally posted by: FishForLunch
Vote him out in 2008 then

genius.

[Mavdog]

It isn't probable that he would be re-elected today. The American public does not like its leaders being dishonest with them.
-----------------------------------------
Associated Press/Ipsos poll conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs. June 6-8, 2005. N=1,001 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.1. Data from 11/03 and earlier co-sponsored by Cook Political Report.

"Overall, do you approve, disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?" If "mixed feelings" or not sure: "If you had to choose, do you lean more toward approve or disapprove?"

Approve Disapprove Mixed Feelings Unsure
6/6-8/05 43 55 1 1 .
5/2-4/05 47 51 2 - .
4/4-6/05 44 54 1 - .
3/7-9/05 48 50 2 1 .
2/7-9/05 45 54 1 - .
1/3-5/05 49 49 1 - .
------------------------------------------
American Military Casualties in Iraq

Date Total In Combat

American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03): 1706 1338
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03) (the list) 1569 1230
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 1239 1034
Since Handover (6/29/04): 840 705
Since Election (1/31/05): 274 233
American Wounded Official Estimated
Total Wounded: 12762 15000 - 38000
-------------------------
The War in Iraq Costs: $176,780,243,806 (rising at rate of approx $3,000 per second)
-------------------------
Poll: USA is losing patience on Iraq
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Nearly six in 10 Americans say the United States should withdraw some or all of its troops from Iraq, a new Gallup Poll finds, the most downbeat view of the war since it began in 2003.

In the Gallup Poll, 56% say the Iraq war wasn't "worth it," essentially matching the high-water mark of 57% a month ago.

• Of those who say the war wasn't worth it, the top reasons cited are fraudulent claims and no weapons of mass destruction found; the number of people killed and wounded; and the belief that Iraq posed no threat to the United States.

[capitalcity]

... and yet, killing brown people with funny names just feels so right.

[Drbio]

It must suck to live in such negativity all the time eh mavdookie?

[u2sarajevo]

Originally posted by: capitalcity
... and yet, killing brown people with funny names just feels so right.

?????

[capitalcity]

Originally posted by: u2sarajevo

?????

a vain attempt at sarcasm...

Funny, no?

[capitalcity]

...Or i could just tell mavdog that unecessary evil begets necessary evil.

[Mavdog]

Originally posted by: capitalcity
... and yet, killing brown people with funny names just feels so right.

a vain attempt at sarcasm...

Funny, no?

uh, no.

...Or i could just tell mavdog that unecessary evil begets necessary evil.

disagree. evil is...evil. the old phrase "you lay down with dogs and you get fleas" is on the mark (much apologises to my canine friends).

Originally posted by: Drbio
It must suck to live in such negativity all the time eh mavdookie?

you have the complete incorrect view (typical and expected as that is) as it is POSITIVE that the duplicity of the current administration has been revealed. unfortunately it has come at a very high cost of American and Iraqi lives and also at a huge economic expense to the American public. the end result is that America is no safer today from a terrorist attack then before the Iraqi campaign began. The average Iraqi is better off...was it worth it?

the american public has become disenchanted with the current administration which will jeapordize the pursuit of their goals. That's good news for the economy, good news for the protection of our environment and good news for the opposition come mid-term elections. all positive.

[FishForLunch]

How do you know that Americans are no safer than before the Iraq war. Has there been any attack on the US since 9/11?

[Drbio]

He doesn't. He only wants to be a negative naysayer. He isn't happy unless he is whining.

[FishForLunch]

Carson points out some lil' biddy parts of the report and the aspects surround it's compilation that weren't widely reported and that Duelfer himself didn't highlight.

For instance, Duelfer wrote his report after concluding his investigation early. He said Zarqawi “tried to get me and my follow car. Two of my guards were killed and one was badly wounded. My hearing's not been right since." After that, Duelfer decided he had gathered plenty of information regarding the possible transfer of weapons to Syria to write his report.

Carson says:

"These aren’t exactly ideal working conditions. Duelfer and Kay had other problems as well: Zarqawi and the ex-Baathist terrorists were also killing off as many Iraqi scientists as they could. According to Congressman Steve Buyer last year, at least nine Iraqi scientists questioned by ISG were assassinated within the year after Operation Iraqi Freedom and another fifty scientists simply fled the country. Mr. Duelfer told Congress that he was struck by the "extreme reluctance of Iraqi managers, scientists and engineers to speak freely."

"struck" indeed. Ho ho ho.

"Duelfer’s Report suffers from curious lapses. In the months and years immediately before Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), Saddam was not nearly as WMD-free as Duelfer surmises. The Report is valuable for what it does reveal, but it certainly does not serve as any basis for the media’s and administration critics’ angry claims of a harmless Iraq."

So why does Duelfer surmise Saddam acted so guilty if he was in full compliance with the U.N. ceasefire demands? According to Carson, the Duelfer report says

"Saddam wanted to have WMD capabilities as long as he could, because WMD had saved him from Iranian human-wave attacks in the 1980’s and from the Shi’ite rebellion in the south after the Gulf War. Chemical weapons were good for gassing the Kurds into intimidated slavery as well

"... By the turn of the millennium, Duelfer writes, things were going well for Saddam. A few years of bribing foreign governments and businesses through Oil-For-Food had managed to erode the sanctions regime entirely. The U.S. was quickly becoming the last holdout in favor of continuation. The Baghdad International Fair in November 2001 was attended by hundreds of companies, and 'the Oil Minister was treated like a rock star.' The end of UN sanctions was finally in sight. Duelfer believes that Saddam, who had already been heavily bombed in 1998 for not complying with UNSCOM’s inspections, thought he could keep his WMD human expertise (but not his visible stockpiles) preserved but inactive, and wait out the sanctions.

So much, so good. This is pretty much what I have supposed for the last year and a half. But Carson says that "a great deal of information in Duelfer’s own Report contradicts his tidy model of a disarmed-but-coyly-pretending dictator." Hmmmmm. And there is Dr. David Kay's report and discoveries after the liberation of Iraq further undermine it. The conclusion Carson draws is one of a Saddam with much more to hide than a naked spider hole.

For example:

1. Secret biological laboratories hidden throughout Baghdad that were never found by UNSCOM, Blix, or UNMOVIC. They were "all in egregious violation of the UN resolutions on disclosure and disarmament" and were only discovered by invading Iraq.

2. "Dr. David Kay reported to Congress in October 2003 that one scientist was ordered to conceal reference strains of [bioweapon] organisms like anthrax, ricin and Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever in his own refrigerator. The scientist knew of other seed stocks but these were missing when ISG investigators showed up to collect them. "

3. A special IIS unit that was was conducting “secret experiments on human beings, resulting in their deaths" the aim of which Duelfer posited “was probably the development of poisons, including ricin and aflatoxin..."

4. “According to Dr. Mahmud Farraj Bilal Al Sammarai, a senior official involved in the weaponization and testing of CBW agents, the aim of the viral [bioweapons] program was intended for the weaponization of smallpox." They used camelpox for testing purposes with the intention of ultimately arming them with smallpox. "Dr. Bilal claimed that he “did not know for a fact that samples of smallpox existed within Iraq.”

Oh, well, thanks Dr. Bilal. I feel better now. Here's something that will keep you up tonight:

"Could Saddam have kept smallpox stores and concealed them from the inspectors Duelfer’s technical advisors believe the answer is yes, particularly in liquid nitrogen freezers. And “several institutes” in Iraq had such freezers. One “institute” had an interesting story attached, according to Duelfer:
'ISG learned of a television news report that was broadcasted on Western television in mid-April 2003 that reported the CPHL had been [recently] looted of highly infectious virus such as smallpox, polio and influenza. ISG visited the latter and interviewed senior researchers who described the incident….ISG did identify a “secret lab” that was operated there, which had been vacated in December 2002. The nature of the research in that laboratory was not determined [by ISG]. '"

For those who don't remember. December 2002 is three months before the invasion of Iraq while we played Parcheesi with the French and Germans.

5. "American soldiers literally found some of Saddam’s purchase orders [from 2000] for mustard gas and 'malignant pustule,' a known code-phrase for anthrax (according to UNSCOM) in a government building. What is interesting are the amounts of the WMD and the dates: five kilograms of mustard gas on August 21, 2000, and three ampules of anthrax on September 6th, 2000. The orders came with protective equipment."

6. When it became clear that the US was coming Saddam began dumping his "mustard gas barrels and cyanide in the Euphrates, never minding that the local people use this river for their drinking water. The US Marines found “significant quantities” of the poisons in the river near Nasiriyah in June of 2003."

7. Since the invasion, Carson notes "the Polish Army actually purchased cyclosarin (five times deadlier than sarin) rockets from the black market in Iraq to keep them out of the hands of Zarqawi's terrorists."

Before the unrealists poo-poo all this as pale ghosts of the stockpiles that the US, British, and French intelligence agencies thought were there, remember that after 9-11 our concern was not that Saddam would get in a boat and invade the US with these weapons. It was that he would give them to one of the terrorist groups he was hob-nobbing with and/or shielding.

Carson currectly notes this as the major concern reminding us that:

[Saddam's] men trained foreign al-Qaeda and other terrorists at Salman Pak in aircraft hijacking...kept Zarqawi, Abu Nidal, and Abu Abbas as house pets, tried to kill former President Bush, tried to blow up Radio Free Europe, and apparently sent an active colonel in the Fedayeen Saddam to baby-sit the 9-11 hijackers in the 2000 Malaysia planning summit, for starters.

Carson concludes:

"It’s really too bad about Duelfer’s work being “cut short” because of Zarqawi. The trail of WMD isn’t cold. It leads to Syria and the Bekka Valley of formerly Syrian-occupied Lebanon, according to a Syrian defector to US intelligence. Gen. Tommy Franks himself leans this way...Duelfer’s next stop should have been Damascus. With Syrian President Bashar Assad now admitting that he has stockpiles of WMD, perhaps it should be ours."

[dalmations202]

"It’s really too bad about Duelfer’s work being “cut short” because of Zarqawi. The trail of WMD isn’t cold. It leads to Syria and the Bekka Valley of formerly Syrian-occupied Lebanon, according to a Syrian defector to US intelligence. Gen. Tommy Franks himself leans this way...Duelfer’s next stop should have been Damascus. With Syrian President Bashar Assad now admitting that he has stockpiles of WMD, perhaps it should be ours."

Tip of the iceberg to what is known............just not told (or known) by the media.