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Ogie Oglethorpe
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Marietta, GA
Dec 1999
time: 05:34
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
Boris never said Bush said anything to link them, Bush never did, the admin. knew sucha lie was too blatant and that even the pliant press might catch them. But the administration did insinuate a link, as Boris showed with the playing up of a supposed Prague meeting between Iraqi intelligence and Ata.
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Not really, because Boris did in fact say Bush said exactly that.
Boris said in fact:
quote:
So he's claiming we must attack Iraq because they planned, authorized, committed or aided the attacks. None of which are true, we now know. |
And said so in support of stated claims by Oerdin that specifically stated Bush claimed Sadaam was behind 9/11. Namely:
quote:
Bush publically claimed there were vast quantities of WMD in Iraq, that Saddam was behind 9/11, and that Saddam would give WMD's to Al Qaeda. All three of those claims were the exact opposite of the British and American intell reports which were given to Bush. If that isn't making stuff up I don't know what is. |
So in both instances the original claim and the supported claim (in a quite unsuccessful attempt to debunk Ming's point I might add) by Boris clearly indicate that Bush stated Sadaam/Iraq were involved directly in 9/11 when he in no way did.
I freely admit he (meaning Bush) did not bother to correct misconceptions, but was it the administration who initially fostered those misconceptions? Heck I can't recall but I don't seem to recall it that way. Moreso it was a rabid mob reaction if I can recall correctly. Did they use it to their advantage? DUHHH!
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
I freely admit he did not bother to correct misconceptions, but was it the administration who initially fostered those misconceptions? Heck I can't recall but I don't seem to recall it that way. Moreso it was a rabid mob reaction if I can recall correctly. Did they use it to their advantage? DUHHH! |
How the hell do you think that misconception was born??
9/11 happens, then we find out most hijackers are saudis, then we go to war in Afghanistan. OK, then comes the "Axis of Evil" speech in January 2002. Hmm, why all of a sudden, in January of 2002, 3 months after 9/11 the administration is now talking about Iraq, Iran, and NK, as opposed to AQ as the greta danger? Then by the middle of 2002 the amdin. is in full swing, saying they know Saddam has a nuclear program (doyou think that was not an outright lie, to state you "know" they have a nuclear program?) and the great danger they will pass WMD's to terrorist... Using a falsehood already out there and fostering and helping it grow is just as bad as inventing it in the first place. You may not be responsible for the first seedling, but you are responsible for the huge crop, and what we sow from it.
I first saw the "Iraq" "AQ" connection from Neo-Con allies like Safire in the Times, and bozo outfits like the Enquirer claiming the whole anthrax scare was using Iraqi anthrax. But as Boris has alrady said, some in the amdin. specially Cheney's outfit played up whatever connection they could between the two constantly, specially the Prague meeting (which Safire first reported IIRC).
The admin. took lies its allies were making and gave them as much creedence as possible, let them get out there in the right wing echo chamber so that people began building the connection, a connection the admin. began to foster in January of 2002 already, by deciding, just 3 months after 9/11 that the true enemies were Iraq, Iran, and NK, not AQ.
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Ogie Oglethorpe
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Marietta, GA
Dec 1999
time: 05:34
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
Hmm, why all of a sudden, in January of 2002, 3 months after 9/11 the administration is now talking about Iraq, Iran, and NK, as opposed to AQ as the greta danger? |
Thats a great question. Personally my thoughts are since the big fish got away in Afghanistan, Bush and Co. felt the need to do something/anything. (It was midterms afterall.  ) They saw the opportunity to take out the scum Sadaam and moved forward using what was thought by all to be a given (in the words of Tennet a slam dunk) as a key point in their pretexts for war. Namely everyone thought Sadaam was hiding something so it made it easy. Nothing new here all that is being described in the DS memo fits.
Further the more true behind closed door reasons for the invasion I do not know but clearly suspect the influences of neocon mentality of draing swamps and setting up democracies for domino effect in the ME probably are closer to the mark. And in Neocon fashion, they probably truely felt that by doing so, it would lessen the potential breeding grounds for future terrorist once that democracy took root and spread throughout the ME.
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Oerdin
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of Internet Music.
Sep 2001
time: 21:34
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WMD claims were 'totally implausible'
Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday June 20, 2005
A key Foreign Office diplomat responsible for liaising with UN inspectors says today that claims the government made about Iraq's weapons programme were "totally implausible".
He tells the Guardian: "I'd read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there's no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues knew that, too".
Carne Ross, who was a member of the British mission to the UN in New York during the run-up to the invasion, resigned from the FO last year, after giving evidence to the Butler inquiry.
He thought about publishing his testimony because he felt so angry. But he was warned that if he did he might be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.
"There was a very good alternative to war that was never properly pursued, which was to close down Saddam's sources of illegal revenue", he says.
Mr Ross also says sanctions imposed against Iraq were wrong. "They did immeasurable damage to the Iraqi civilian population. We were conscious of that but we did too little to address it", he says.
Earlier, after the September 11 attacks on the US, Mr Ross spent six weeks in Afghanistan negotiating with warlords. "The allies didn't understand Afghanistan," he says. "They didn't have sufficient forces on the ground, were trapped in their fortified compounds, naive about the the willingness of the warlords to cede power, and were far too optimistic that opium production could be curtailed."
Mr Ross has set up a consultancy and advisory service, Independent Diplomat, and wants to raise awareness about the plight of the Saharawi people, displaced by Morocco from Western Sahara in defiance of the UN security council.
He plans to visit the 150,000 refugees from Western Sahara encamped across the border in northwest Algeria. "British policy is to do nothing because British interests dictate that fairly minuscule trade with Morocco is more important," he said.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq...1510259,00.html
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Oerdin
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of Internet Music.
Sep 2001
time: 21:34
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One of the dozens of new memo's to come out was a memo from 2002 which dealt with the Bush Administration's dramatic ramp up of air attacks on Iraq in 2002 when the Bush Administration said it hadn't decided to go to war. Attacks by US planes went from one or two per month to hundreds per month and the British foreign office was trying to get the US to stop because the attacks because they were illegal.
quote:
bombing raids were illegal, says Foreign Office
Michael Smith
A SHARP increase in British and American bombing raids on Iraq in the run-up to war “to put pressure on the regime” was illegal under international law, according to leaked Foreign Office legal advice.
The advice was first provided to senior ministers in March 2002. Two months later RAF and USAF jets began “spikes of activity” designed to goad Saddam Hussein into retaliating and giving the allies a pretext for war.
The Foreign Office advice shows military action to pressurise the regime was “not consistent with” UN law, despite American claims that it was.
The decision to provoke the Iraqis emerged in leaked minutes of a meeting between Tony Blair and his most senior advisers — the so-called Downing Street memo published by The Sunday Times shortly before the general election.
Democratic congressmen claimed last week the evidence it contains is grounds for impeaching President George Bush.
Those at the meeting on July 23, 2002, included Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The minutes quote Hoon as saying that the US had begun spikes of activity to put pressure on the regime.
Ministry of Defence figures for bombs dropped by the RAF on southern Iraq, obtained by the Liberal Democrats through Commons written answers, show the RAF was as active in the bombing as the Americans and that the “spikes” began in May 2002.
However, the leaked Foreign Office legal advice, which was also appended to the Cabinet Office briefing paper for the July meeting, made it clear allied aircraft were legally entitled to patrol the no-fly zones over the north and south of Iraq only to deter attacks by Saddam’s forces on the Kurdish and Shia populations.
The allies had no power to use military force to put pressure of any kind on the regime.
The increased attacks on Iraqi installations, which senior US officers admitted were designed to “degrade” Iraqi air defences, began six months before the UN passed resolution 1441, which the allies claim authorised military action. The war finally started in March 2003.
This weekend the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Goodhart, vice-president of the International Commission of Jurists and a world authority on international law, said the intensified raids were illegal if they were meant to pressurise the regime.
He said UN Resolution 688, used by the allies to justify allied patrols over the no-fly zones, was not adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which deals with all matters authorising military force.
“Putting pressure on Iraq is not something that would be a lawful activity,” said Goodhart, who is also the Liberal Democrat shadow Lord Chancellor.
The Foreign Office advice noted that the Americans had “on occasion” claimed that the allied aircraft were there to enforce compliance with resolutions 688 and 687, which ordered Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.
“This view is not consistent with resolution 687, which does not deal with the repression of the Iraqi civilian population, or with resolution 688, which was not adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and does not contain any provision for enforcement,” it said. |
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/articl...1660300,00.html
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Oerdin
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of Internet Music.
Sep 2001
time: 21:34
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Finally we are beginning to see a few brave Republicans stand up and say that George Bush is a liar and that his policies are bad for America. (Hagel - WH "completely disconnected from reality") 
quote:
Hit by friendly fire
With his polls down, Bush takes flak on Iraq from a host of critics--including some in his own party
By Kevin Whitelaw
Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He's upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He's also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes." "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."
That's strikingly blunt talk from a member of the president's party, even one cast as something of a pariah in the GOP because of his early skepticism about the war. "I got beat up pretty good by my own party and the White House that I was not a loyal Republican," he says. Today, he notes, things are changing: "More and more of my colleagues up here are concerned."
Indeed, there are signs that the politics of the Iraq war are being reshaped by the continuing tide of bad news. Take this month in Iraq, with 47 U.S. troops killed in the first 15 days. That's already five more than the toll for the entire month of June last year. With the rate of insurgent attacks near an all-time high and the war's cost set to top $230 billion, more politicians on both sides of the aisle are responding to opinion polls that show a growing number of Americans favoring a withdrawal from Iraq. Republican Sens. Lincoln Chafee and Lindsey Graham have voiced their concerns. And two Republicans, including the congressman who brought "freedom fries" to the Capitol, even joined a pair of Democratic colleagues in sponsoring a bill calling for a troop withdrawal plan to be drawn up by year's end. "I feel confident that the opposition is going to build," says Rep. Ron Paul, the other Republican sponsor and a longtime opponent of the war.
Sagging polls. The measure is not likely to go anywhere, but Hagel calls it "a major crack in the dike." Whether or not that's so, the White House has reason to worry that the assortment of critiques of Bush's wartime performance may be approaching a tipping point. Only 41 percent of Americans now support Bush's handling of the Iraq war, the lowest mark ever in the Associated Press-Ipsos poll. And the Iraq news has combined with a lethargic economy and doubts about the president's Social Security proposals to push Bush's overall approval ratings near all-time lows. For now, most Republicans remain publicly loyal to the White House. "Why would you give your enemies a timetable?" asks House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "(Bush) doesn't fight the war on news articles or television or on polls." |
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/a...0627/27bush.htm
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Oerdin
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of Internet Music.
Sep 2001
time: 21:34
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The AP seems to have finally gotten off of its lazy pro-Republican ass and has started to carry the series of Downing Street Memos which continue to be uncovered by the British press proving that Bush lied and distorted fact after fact after fact. That means that domestic papers are now carrying the story about how Bush lied to America.
quote:
British memos: Iraq war sounds like mere 'grudge'
June 19, 2005
BY THOMAS WAGNER
LONDON -- When Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser dined with Condoleezza Rice six months after Sept. 11, the U.S. national security adviser didn't want to discuss Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida.
She wanted to talk about ''regime change'' in Iraq, setting the stage for the U.S.-led invasion more than a year later.
President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried the White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked secret Downing Street memos that have renewed questions and debate about Washington's motives for ousting Saddam Hussein.
In one of the memos, British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts openly asks whether the Bush administration had a clear and compelling military reason for war.
*''U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing,'' Ricketts says in the memo. ''For Iraq, 'regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam.''
The documents confirm Blair was genuinely concerned about Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, but also indicate he was determined to go to war as America's top ally, even though his government thought a preemptive attack may be illegal under international law.
*''The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September,'' said a typed copy of a March 22, 2002, memo obtained Thursday by the Associated Press and written to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
*''But even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programs will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW [chemical or biological weapons] fronts: the programs are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up.''
The eight memos -- all labeled ''secret'' or ''confidential'' -- were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times.
'Softening up' illegal?
The Sunday Times this week reported that lawyers told the British government that U.S. and British bombing of Iraq in the months before the war was illegal under international law. That report, also by Smith, noted that almost a year before the war started, they began to strike more frequently.
The newspaper quoted Lord Goodhart, vice president of the International Commission of Jurists, as backing the Foreign Office lawyers' view that aircraft could only patrol the no-fly zones to deter attacks by Saddam's forces.
Goodhart said that if ''the purpose was to soften up Iraq for a future invasion or even to intimidate Iraq, the coalition forces were acting without lawful authority,'' the Sunday Times reported.
AP
CONDI'S ROLE
Here are excerpts from material in secret Downing Street memos written in 2002. The information, authenticated by a senior British government official, was transcribed from the original documents:
In a memo dated March 14, 2002, Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, David Manning, tells the prime minister about a dinner he had with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state. Manning is now the British ambassador to the United States.
*''We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq. It is clear that Bush is grateful for your [Blair] support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States. And you would not budge either in your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option.''
*''Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed. But there were some signs, since we last spoke, of greater awareness of the practical difficulties and political risks. ... From what she said, Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions: How to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified; What value to put on the exiled Iraqi opposition; How to coordinate a U.S./allied military campaign with internal opposition; (assuming there is any); What happens on the morning after?''
AP |
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news...ws-blair19.html
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Oerdin
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of Internet Music.
Sep 2001
time: 21:34
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Krugman has a pretty good take on the Downing Street memos and Bush's rush to war.
quote:
The War President
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By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: June 24, 2005
VIENNA
In this former imperial capital, every square seems to contain a giant statue of a Habsburg on horseback, posing as a conquering hero.
America's founders knew all too well how war appeals to the vanity of rulers and their thirst for glory. That's why they took care to deny presidents the kingly privilege of making war at their own discretion.
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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Related More Columns by Paul Krugman
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But after 9/11 President Bush, with obvious relish, declared himself a "war president." And he kept the nation focused on martial matters by morphing the pursuit of Al Qaeda into a war against Saddam Hussein.
In November 2002, Helen Thomas, the veteran White House correspondent, told an audience, "I have never covered a president who actually wanted to go to war" - but she made it clear that Mr. Bush was the exception. And she was right.
Leading the nation wrongfully into war strikes at the heart of democracy. It would have been an unprecedented abuse of power even if the war hadn't turned into a military and moral quagmire. And we won't be able to get out of that quagmire until we face up to the reality of how we got in.
Let me talk briefly about what we now know about the decision to invade Iraq, then focus on why it matters.
The administration has prevented any official inquiry into whether it hyped the case for war. But there's plenty of circumstantial evidence that it did.
And then there's the Downing Street Memo - actually the minutes of a prime minister's meeting in July 2002 - in which the chief of British overseas intelligence briefed his colleagues about his recent trip to Washington.
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam," says the memo, "through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." It doesn't get much clearer than that.
The U.S. news media largely ignored the memo for five weeks after it was released in The Times of London. Then some asserted that it was "old news" that Mr. Bush wanted war in the summer of 2002, and that W.M.D. were just an excuse. No, it isn't. Media insiders may have suspected as much, but they didn't inform their readers, viewers and listeners. And they have never held Mr. Bush accountable for his repeated declarations that he viewed war as a last resort.
Still, some of my colleagues insist that we should let bygones be bygones. The question, they say, is what we do now. But they're wrong: it's crucial that those responsible for the war be held to account.
Let me explain. The United States will soon have to start reducing force levels in Iraq, or risk seeing the volunteer Army collapse. Yet the administration and its supporters have effectively prevented any adult discussion of the need to get out.
On one side, the people who sold this war, unable to face up to the fact that their fantasies of a splendid little war have led to disaster, are still peddling illusions: the insurgency is in its "last throes," says Dick Cheney. On the other, they still have moderates and even liberals intimidated: anyone who suggests that the United States will have to settle for something that falls far short of victory is accused of being unpatriotic.
We need to deprive these people of their ability to mislead and intimidate. And the best way to do that is to make it clear that the people who led us to war on false pretenses have no credibility, and no right to lecture the rest of us about patriotism.
The good news is that the public seems ready to hear that message - readier than the media are to deliver it. Major media organizations still act as if only a small, left-wing fringe believes that we were misled into war, but that "fringe" now comprises much if not most of the population.
In a Gallup poll taken in early April - that is, before the release of the Downing Street Memo - 50 percent of those polled agreed with the proposition that the administration "deliberately misled the American public" about Iraq's W.M.D. In a new Rasmussen poll, 49 percent said that Mr. Bush was more responsible for the war than Saddam Hussein, versus 44 percent who blamed Saddam.
Once the media catch up with the public, we'll be able to start talking seriously about how to get out of Iraq.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com |
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/o...krugman.html?hp
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BlackCat
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quote:
Originally posted by Oerdin
Krugman has a pretty good take on the Downing Street memos and Bush's rush to war.
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Actually, no. I've seen better from our local tabloid newspapers and they are pretty low. All I can see is some vicious Bush bashing and a reprint of what others may have said.
Sorry to say it, but to me it seems that the gun is cold and it is because it has never been fired.
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BlackCat
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quote:
Originally posted by Oerdin
So you are claiming that Bush & all didn't lie and deliberately mislead people in order to go to war? |
Yup.
All these alleged "lies" that are supposed to have been told are mostly based upon facts that has been revealed after the war, where they before the war was posibilities.
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17-06-2005 22:05
). 
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