Seriously, now, why did George W. Bush acquiesce and restate all by himself that there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq?
August 23, 2006 posted to You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_A77N5WKWM
unofficial transcript (Net the Truth Online)
...part of the reason we went into Iraq - the main reason we went into Iraq at the time - was we thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction...it turns out he didn't but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction... imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein was there, stirring up trouble... in the Middle East... what did Iraq have to do... nothing except it's part of... nobody in this administration has ever suggested that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack...nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September 11 were ordered by Iraq... I have suggested that resentment and lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists willing to use suiciders to kill to achieve an objective... (George W. Bush)
Joseph Wilson's original sin
Posted: March 8, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
World Net Daily
Anyone who has followed the Scooter Libby trial closely knows that Patrick Fitzgerald tried the wrong man. Among other things, Wilson has lied conspicuously about who sent him to Niger, who did not send him, what he found, what he did not find, and how he reported his findings.
Wilson did all of this during wartime in an effort to undermine the commander in chief. If there is not a law about this sort of mischief, there should be.
For all the reporting on the Wilson affair, however, the media have been preposterously silent about two critical and related understandings: the first is why Joseph Wilson originally insisted we not go into Iraq; and the second is why the Bush administration chose not to "find" what Wilson assured us we would find.
Both of these stories have been hiding in plain sight.
At the suggestion of his CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame, Wilson made his critical trip to the African hellhole of Niger in February 2002. He had been there before. In the preface to the paperback version of his comically titled book, "The Politics of Truth," Wilson claims he went to Niger in 1999 "at the request of the CIA to look into other uranium-related matters."
The Joseph Wilson that mainstream America knows is a man of conscience who began to oppose the impending war with Iraq because his trip to Niger had proved to him the emptiness of Saddam's WMD boasts. This is the storyline that the major media continue to run with. Unfortunately, however, it is simply and demonstrably not true.
Conveniently overlooked by the media is an op-ed piece that unravels this lie in a stroke. Wilson wrote it for the San Jose Mercury News on Oct. 13, 2002. Although ant-war in its thrust, its message runs fully counter to the one that would make Wilson famous.
In it, Wilson argues that threatening to oust Saddam "will ensure that Saddam will use every weapon in his arsenal to defend himself." By every weapon, of course, he means the soon-to-be mocked WMDs. "As the just-released CIA report suggests," Wilson continues, "when cornered, Saddam is very likely to fight dirty."
Two weeks before the op-ed, in fact, the CIA had published a National Intelligence Estimate titled "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction." Wilson's trip eight months earlier had obviously failed to persuade him or Plame that Iraq was not planning to fight dirty.
"Iraq [has been] vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake," reads the CIA report. "Acquiring either would shorten the time to produce nuclear weapons." Plame was a WMD specialist, by the way.
In his Mercury News op-ed, Wilson proceeds to make an elaborate and unconvincing argument that Saddam will desist from using his WMDs only if he is assured of keeping his job.
"One of the strongest arguments for a militarily supported inspection plan," continues Wilson, "is that it doesn't threaten Saddam with extinction, a threat that could push him to fight back with the very weapons we're seeking to destroy."
Unlike the U.S. Senate under Clinton, which had voted unanimously to make "regime change" official U.S, policy, Wilson wants Saddam to remain in power.
To understand why Wilson was working overtime to keep Saddam on the job is to understand that Saddam did indeed have something to hide. Although the evidence strongly suggests that Saddam was able to move most of his WMDs out of country with Russian help, he did not move them all.
A few weeks back I received an e-mail from a scientist affiliated with a major university's nuclear program. In the e-mail, he casually referred to the "1.77 tons of enriched uranium" the U.S. found in Iraq.
More than a little skeptical, I e-mailed the scientist back, "Tell me how we know about the 1.77 tons." He referred me to a fascinating article from BBC News online dated July 7, 2004.
Titled "U.S. reveals Iraq nuclear operation," the article details how 20 experts from the U.S. Energy Department's secret laboratories packaged and removed 1.77 tons of enriched uranium and then flew the material out of Iraq aboard a military plane.
The article quotes a smiling Spencer Abraham, secretary of energy, saying, "This operation was a major achievement." And just as suddenly as the story appeared, it disappeared. Not a word was heard of it from the major networks. The only American media to follow up on it was WorldNetDaily.
This is exactly the kind of story that the major media do not want to disseminate. They much prefer the Wilson storyline, however absurd on the face of it, that Bush lied us into war with manufactured stories of WMDs that never existed.
The question remains, though, why did the administration cooperate in spiking the story? "My feeling is that Abraham didn't get the memo," writes my scientist contact. "He opened his mouth and then everybody scrambled to have him never do it again."
The scientist speculates that Abraham may not have understood what the American forces had discovered. "He made enriched-u look like dirty bomb material, and that's that," adds the scientist. "But that isn't that."
"Enriched uranium = nuclear weapons," the scientist continues. He argues that the administration prefers that the American people remain ignorant on the subject, possibly to avoid panic.
"'Enriched uranium' means nothing to them. But it's everything. A machinist, a physicist and plastic explosive are all you need to make a Hiroshima-sized bang."
There is a second reason for discretion, namely that this material was not manufactured by Saddam. "I think that the French gave Saddam the enriched-u," observes the scientist, "and once Saddam decided to quit fighting Iran and start supporting Abu Nidal in earnest, we decided 'enough of that.'"
"Knowing the French," he adds, "they'd demand their hooch back after starting all the trouble with it."
The French connection almost assuredly got Joseph Wilson involved in this story in the first place. In 2002, he worked as an international consultant and had a long and deep involvement with French interests, mining interests in particular. Plame herself boasted of her husband's numerous "French contacts."
To be sure, the French government and hundreds of its key industries wanted to keep Saddam in power. Saddam had long been among the very best customers of its defense industry.
Along with the Russians, the French were also the primary beneficiaries of the shamefully corrupt United Nations Oil-for-Food program.
Even if Wilson had no involvement with the ill-concealed scandal, he had to know how Saddam's continued reign benefited his clients and potential clients. Why else would a Washington-based consultant write an op-ed for a San Jose newspaper?...
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54590
Read all the transcripts on the page
Bush: 'We're not leaving so long as I'm president'
RAW STORY
Published: Monday August 21, 2006
...QUESTION: A quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mention for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?
BUSH: I square it because imagine a world in which you had a Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. The idea is to try to help change the Middle East.
Now, look, I -- part of the reason we went into Iraq: was -- the main reason we went into Iraq: at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.
But I also talked about the human suffering in Iraq, and I also talked the need to advance a freedom agenda. And so my question -- my answer to your question is, is that imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein was there, stirring up even more trouble in a part of a world that had so much resentment and so much hatred that people came and killed 3,000 of our citizens.
You know, I've heard this theory about, you know, everything was just fine until we arrived and, you know, kind of -- the "stir up the hornet's nest" theory. It just doesn't hold water as far as I'm concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East. They were --
QUESTION: What did Iraq: have to do with that?
BUSH: What did Iraq: have to do with what?
QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.
BUSH: Nothing, except for it's part of -- and nobody's ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq: was a -- Iraq: -- the lesson of September the 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken.
Nobody's ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. I have suggested, however, that resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists who are willing to use suiciders to kill to achieve an objective. I have made that case. And one way to defeat that -- you know, defeat resentment, is with hope. And the best way to do hope is through a form of government.
Now, I said going into Iraq: we got to take these threats seriously before they fully materialized. I saw a threat. I fully believe it was the right decision to remove Saddam Hussein, and I fully believe the world was better off without him. Now, the question is, how do we succeed in Iraq? And you don't succeed by leaving before the mission is complete, like some in this political process are suggesting...
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Bush_calls_Lebanon_aid_troops_0821.html
Partial Transcript Press conference and link
Bush Admits Iraq Had No Weapons of Mass Destruction, No Link to 9/11
The following transcript snippet is taken from this morning's presidential news conference. This exchange took place near the end of President George W. Bush's remarks and responses.
In this excerpt, the President flatly refutes the two reasons he and his administration used to goad Congress and frighten the American public into the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
This is the first time the President or Vice President have publicly admitted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and was not connected to the 9/11 attacks.
"BUSH: Now, look, I -- part of the reason we went into Iraq was -- the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction...
You know, I've heard this theory about, you know, everything was just fine until we arrived and, you know, kind of -- the "stir up the hornet's nest" theory. It just doesn't hold water as far as I'm concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East. They were --
QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with that?
BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?
QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.
BUSH: Nothing, except for it's part of -- and nobody's ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a -- Iraq -- the lesson of September the 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken.
Nobody's ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.."
http://usliberals.about.com/b/a/257723.htm
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