WMD: Who’s telling the truth?

Saddam is dead.
Uday is dead
Qusay is dead.
Chemical Ali soon will be dead. Huh, how did he get that name? Using WMD on the Kurds for one thing.
Parliamentary democracy in Iraq.
Terrorist groups including AQ being decimated (Zarqawi is dead – was in Iraq both Baghdad and then no man’s land before 2003)
Iran prevented from influence in any portion of Iraq.
Shia voted for a united Iraq.
Kurds voted for a united Iraq.
And now Sunnis part of a united Iraq.
An example for Pakistan to follow.

Yeah, Saddam was just a peace-loving, though misunderstood moderate, who never had any desire whatsoever to build nuclear weapons.
I guess that 550 metric tons of yellow cake uranium was fertilizer for one of Saddam’s gardens.

The Bush administration knew full well there were no WMD but according to Bush, god told him to attack Iraq so the absence of WMD was just an insignificant formality. I guess god also told him to hire Blackwater, a mercenary group that shot and killed innocent Iraqi civilians, run guns to the insurgents and lord only knows what else. Now that some of these murders are coming to trial maybe more people will see this corrupt administration for what it really is.

Whether or not there were WMD’s is not important; what IS important is the Bush policy of pre-emptive wars. Do you have the right to kill your neighbor because he bought a gun and you think he might kill you? Absolutely not, and neither did Bush. I wonder… who has more blood on their hands – George Bush or Saddaam Hussein.

Lanny Edwards’ post is indiciative of the reason why there can’t be a rational discussion of the WMD issue for at least a decade…or three.
There are too many people so devoted to their hatred of Bush, devotion bordering on religious fervor, that they will never acknowlege facts which do not agree with their view, much less accept them.

Bush said, “It’s hard for me to speculate.” That’s exactly what he, Chaney et al were doing when they decided to invade Iraq.

Remember, lots of democrats were touting the WMD mantra back then.

Maybe we could have achieved all of the same results in Iraq without mismanaging a potentially unnecessary war. But we will never know because Bush did not even try anything else. Violence is the first resort of the incompetent. I had four different mid level and low level Navy intelligence and Navy Spec War people tell me BEFORE the invasion that we would not find any WMD. If some of the junior people in the intelligence community knew that, why didn’t the senior people? Willful ignorance maybe? Senior Bush sychophants filtering the information to ensure that Bush had what they knew he wanted and needed to hear to justify what he wanted to do maybe? Manufacturing plausible deniability is not that hard. And if pre-emptive self defense is such a great idea, then it would be perfectly acceptable for say, Syria to invade Israel, or North Korea to invade South Korea, or Russia to invade Poland (again) as long as they claim that pre-emptive self defense is necessary because the other country “is a threat.” And lest I forget, that concept now means that it was okay for Japan to attack Pearl Harbor because we were a threat to them and so pre-emptive self defense was appropriate. Or is pre-emptive self defense for a perception of threat only good enough for Bush?

“I guess that 550 metric tons of yellow cake uranium was fertilizer for one of Saddam’s gardens.”
Ha. Suuure.
No one attempts to ask boosh under oath about their known lies about WMD’s?
Yet, they ask Clinton about consensual s/e/x under oath?
Wow.

There is no point crying over spilled Milk. Afghanistan is falling with a noose around Kabul, Zimbabawe is in serious crisis, terrorism from Pakistani soil is spreading, there are plenty of opportunities for the Bush Admin to redeem itself. Move on and act now or yes the legacy will be WMD

Wake up America and and realize that there were never an WMDs in Iraq. Our govenment used that as an excuse to invade that country so that we could get a foothold and influence the control of oil. And who put Sadamm in power in the first place?!
Realize that 9/11 atrocity was perpertrated by our government to give Bush the opportunity to create Homeland Security under the guise of protecting us from terrorism. Now, any U.S. citizen can have his home searched, phone tapped, taken into custody and interrogated without any reason having to be given or anyone told of his whereabouts. Hmmmm….shades of Nazi Germany. Does anyone remember that?! Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Think about that, America…..

Blame’…what a mild word for the unncecessary death of over 4,000 soldiers, hundreds of billions down the toilet and the image of the USA so tarnished that we’ve become the bad guys….and we are ‘still’ in the friggin Hell holefor some puzzling reason…stillmaking it ‘safe’ for rule out of Tehran.

Oh great, now its time for the conspiracy nuts to chime in with the insane and unsupportable conspiracy theories. Where is your objective evidence – without evidence I will believe aliens did it before I believe the government did it. Paranoid unprovable beliefs are not evidence.

Dave you sure sound like Rumsfield. First he told us that we know where those WMD are, then we knew where they were and then story became those have been moved to Syria. Saddam did not had any nuclear weapons that was confirmed by IAEA before even war. And US and Britian never gave Blix any time to confirm same. WMD is just eye wash. When Iraq invaded Iran and when Iraq used chemical weapons on Iranian, we were on side of Iraq. Osama, Zaeqawi and most Al-qaeda are same guys that Reagan’s CIA armed, trained and helped and were calling “mujahideen” when it suited us to use them to confort USSR.

rizvisa1: You are absolutely right. Our government trained Al Queda to fight the Russians. Now we are fighting Al Queda. We should however, because they were responsible for 911. Our government would be wise to carefully choose it’s temporary allies in the future.

Saddam kept his country in line. Look at what we have now.
And remember something else….he used OUR weapons. That’s why I opposed the war in the first place.

When a country arm, train and help independent groups to fight army, things eventually come back to bite. We created Afghan Mujahid in 1980′s and they are creating havoc. Pakistan helped laskar and now they are out of hand. India helped tamils in sri lanka and now they are still creating mess in sri lanka. In south america again we creted forces. I am equally sure Iran help of Hizbullah will eventually haunt them too. Once genie is out of bottle, it is so difficult to put it back.

GWB now claims he should have thought more…..IRAQ had WMD while back, UN couldn’t find any…Our people couldn’t find any. If Saddam was alive he would have said..”Got rid of it”…Gen Powell was made out to be fool when he said they had it.
To think Clinton was almost impeached for sex with a dress..GWB should get more..
Kind of reminds me of the “Underpinnings of economy are strong” line they were talking most recently.
Bottom line..Americans were fooled again!!

What is so perplexing is there were WMD in Iraq and the Bush Administration did not and will not make it public. You ask; what WMD’s???
Well according to a good friend who served in Irag and did participate in a number of “high level” intelligence briefings, there was a enough poison gas to kill millions of people.
Why this has not been reported is the $64,000 question.

“The debate over WMD will never be settled. It is not interest of most members of congress from both party to get to the bottom of truth.”….the truth is ONLY the president has teh power to declare war. Congress gave President kennedy the same authority with REAL WMD with PROOF and STILL KEnnedy didn’t not launch war. And NOBODY could make him. It is the president’s responsibility 100% of launching this war. There is no need for debate. Who was the president at the time????? THAT is who’s fault it is. If you dont want that responsibility, then dont run for the job. war is the president’s responsible to say “charge!” or not. ONLY the president. He is the ONLY one who can say charge and nobody can force him to make that statement, as Kennedy showed when he was begged and bullied to attack Cuba yet he refused. That is what a president is supposed to do. Take responsibilities and make the right decisions. Bush didn’t. Period. He SCREWED UP. Period. EVERYONE KNOWS IT too. It’s so ridiculous. Like a child with his hand in teh cookie jar who denies he took a cookie while crumbs are still on his face. yeah, real mature, Georgie. Who ya think you’re fooling, huh? Then WHO stole the WMD from the cookie jar, huh???? idiot. not only is it your fault, you look like an IDIOT for trying to dodge the responsibility. Man, history is NOT going to look kindly on Georgie boy.

For all you idiots who think there was no WMD’s need to reexamine your heads. Does ANYONE know what the original U.N. Resolution was about???ANYONE, ANYONE????? Does anyone remember the Gulf War in 1991? All you guys are doing are just spewing out democratic talking points but have no, and I mean, no idea and no facts to back your assurtions with. UNSCOM had been kicked out years prior, because Saddam felt that they were tainted with CIA agents. Now, WHY would CIA agents go undercover if Saddam was no threat? I’m waiting!!! Even the Congressional Intell. Committee called back and questioned former CIA officers that were involved in intell reporting said there WAS NO SOURCE THAT SAID IRAQ HAD NO WMD PROGRAMS. As such, they reported that “Iraq was producing and stockpiling chemical weapons.”

WMD? Colin lost his reputation to Bush. BS there never were WMD and Bush knew it and MOST of AMERICA and the globe knows it. Innocent American lives slaughtered along with Iraqis. I just hope President Obama is successful during his term and thereby potentially embarrass Bush with his success. I will not forgive Bush for purposely altering the intelligence. This man had done it for selfish reasons. There will be some vindication if we are completely oil free 10 years from now and Bush and Cheney are alive to witness it.

Matt, you might want to get a refund for or exchange your copy of the Constitution because yours seems to have a typo. According mine, Article I section 8 (para. 11) states that Congress shall have the power to declare war – NOT the President.

What is it about the fact that we found mustard gas in Irag or the fact that saddam used chemical weapons to murder 700,000 of his own people? Liberals are always quick to call prez Bush a terrorists but have no problem giving olive branches or platforms at Columbia University to holocaust-denying, hitler reincarnates.
THANK YOU PREZ BUSH FOR KEEPING US SAFE!

EWSA, you might want to get a copy of FISA. According to section 1802 of FISA warrantless wiretapping in the US has been legal for decades – as long as the conditions and requirements (read that as due process)of FISA were met. That is why what Bush did was illegal and unconstitutional because FISA was not an impediment to the legitimate electronic surveillance that the National Security Act authorizes and even REQUIRES the president and NSC to perform. Actually, FISA did not even apply to foreign terrorists. There was a legal and an illegal way for Bush to get the intelligence we need, and even though the legal way provided a process, he chose the illegal route.

I would not go so far to say that it is ridiculous to fight religious extremists. It is ridiculous however to talk about winning the war on terror – ever. Killing every last religious terrorist is the only way to win the war on terror, but killing every last one is not possible. Cutting off the heads won’t work either because it is a hydra, not a snake. This war will never end as long as there are human beings alive who are unable to agree to disagree about their religious differences.

B K: Good fact finding. I don’t think Bush would be capable of writing a bestseller and winning a nobel peace prize. Ever heard him speak? Or Palin? The GOP tends to pick leaders that can’t form complete sentances.

As for going to war to stop murdering tyrants Hussein – why hasn’t Bush invaded Darfur or Sudan or Somalia to stop the murdering tyrants there?

It is absolutely amazing to me on how many intel op’s post to these sites…NOT..guess everyone has an opinion and it is just that an opinion only and nothing more. No one really knows what goes on behind closed doors; therefore, I, like all here, have nothing of importance to write…

Liberals have cost our US economy $500billion annually for YEARS by their refusal to allow us to drill, not to mention the incredible amount of jobs that drilling would create. Instead, we send that $$$ out of our borders every year to countries who hate us (which is why liberals like those countries in the first place) where the leaders could NOT care less about the environment. Why not drill here where the people can have control over the impact of the environment?
Do you think Putin, Ahmadenijead or Chavez gives a rat’s a** about the damage they are doing to the earth?
Liberals hold America to higher standards then they do the rest of the world and then simultaneously talk down about it because not everyone here can afford a mercedes or 5 bedroom house.
Or what about the damage the robin hood liberals brought to our housing market?
Homes for everyone! Homes for everyone! That worked out well, didn’t it?

There’s just too much evidence the White House wanted to attack Iraq from the start. Wolfowitz was writing about it in the 1990s, and while he didn’t work in the White House, he clearly was part of the neocon inner circle.
I still haven’t heard anybody put forward a credible reason why they wanted to attack Iraq. Usually I have a guess about motives – even when I don’t know much about what I’m talking about, lol. In this case, I really have no idea.
But I do think weapons of mass destruction were just a ploy to get Congress and the American people to go along.

Bush ended a genocidal regime and liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban. We know there were WMDS !Saddam Hussein used WMDs on his own people, end of story. Besides, according to the report by the Associated Press, A large stockpile of concentrated natural Uranium, known as “yellowcake,” reached a Canadian port to complete a top secret U.S. Operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad, and a ship voyage crossing two oceans. The Uranium material had been housed at a former Iraqi nuclear complex 12 miles from Baghdad.

BK
Have you ever heard barry O speak without a teleprompter-
“I uhh uhhh uhhhh errr aaaa change uuuhhh change uhhuu.”
I bet you never have because the NYT and other corrupt media keep it out of sight whenever possible.

robert b, you make Iraq sound a resounding success…. it is very good that Saddam and his sons and cohorts are dead…however, at what cost?
Had President Bush and his team managed the war competently, it can easily be argued that less than half the 4500 of our soldiers would have been killed …. the whole thing from conception to the present is total FUBAR…as my Marine Corp brother called it when he got back from his 3rd tour there…
robert b wrote:
Saddam is dead.
Uday is dead
Qusay is dead.
Chemical Ali soon will be dead. Huh, how did he get that name? Using WMD on the Kurds for one thing.
Parliamentary democracy in Iraq.
Terrorist groups including AQ being decimated (Zarqawi is dead – was in Iraq both Baghdad and then no man’s land before 2003)
Iran prevented from influence in any portion of Iraq.
Shia voted for a united Iraq.
Kurds voted for a united Iraq.
And now Sunnis part of a united Iraq.
An example for Pakistan to follow.

am not asking if they find wmd or nuclear weapon or not. why is that order
world leaders who committed war crime where tried in world court in hague and saddam who used chemical weapon on another country was tried in iraq as commom criminal. it think some people is trying to hide something

“the President doesn’t ‘get an opportunity to redo a decision,’”
Well, folks, there you have it. He regrets the decision to go into Iraq. So, you can stop trying to sell it as being an inspired decision. It was BS on every level.

I wonder why the Associated Press story in July 2008 never becamoe part of the discussion. AP reported on July 5, 2008, “550 metric tonnes of yellowcake the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program, a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium, arrived in Montreal.”
So guess what. there were WMD’s.

We’ve known all along about that yellowcake. And you’re way off-base suggesting that it is a WMD. It’s nowhere near a WMD.

“The WMD issue was just an excuse by Sick Hypocritical Liberals to turn their backs on a genocidal dictator who was murdering his own people, threatening the world’s oil supply, planing on getting and using WMDs in the future, and purposely deceiving the UN about having them. Now with OBie as President, it won’t be long before all our enemies have access to them.”
That’s cool how you can sit on your shoulders like that. George Bush has admitted that Iraq was a mistake. Admit you’re an apologist and move on. The case made was WMDs. Period. We would not have gone in otherwise. Get it?

OK, it always gets humourous when people try to bash Bush. It clouds the mind and makes people look truly foolish. Who encouraged the sub-prime loans? Clinton. Who was offered bin Laden’s head on a platter three times and replied, “Let him go?” Clinton. Who let Hussein murder hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, unchecked and unchallenged? It wasn’t Bush, that’s for sure. Hatred of Bush somehow manifests into veiled racism. Since people that look different in a country far, far away are dying, it’s not our problem. For anyone that even thinks for a moment that 9/11 was committed by our own people, you really need professional help. Congress approved the war. Right or wrong. Bush didn’t gather the evidence and there is nothing to suggest they weren’t there at one time. They were given months to get rid of them, that’s plenty of time to move them out and conceal them elsewhere. Your perfect congress approved of the war, Bush didn’t do this without their consent. Even Hillary voted for it and said, “Stay the course.”

“You Liberals are amazing, simply amazing. You claim on one hand that Bush was this super mastermind who fooled the ENTIRE WORLD to take this country to war for himself.
On the other hand, with every other single issue under the sun you claim he is the most incompetent president in history!”
I think if you actually paid attention, you’d see that no one person said both things. We all know Bush didn’t fool anybody and that he IS the most incompetent president in history. But way to show an appreciation for nuance, and a mandate to paint a very complex and disperate group of people with the stroke of one badly broken brush. We’re all in this together, y’know. Or wait…”you all” don’t think that at all do you.

In a move to reassert Congressional independence at the start of the new presidential administration, the vice president will be barred from joining weekly internal Senate deliberations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun.
Reid’s decision to exclude Vice President-elect Joe Biden from the Senate arena where he spent most of his adult life is intended to restore constitutional checks and balances that tilted heavily toward the executive branch during the Bush presidency.

“Chemical Ali soon will be dead. Huh, how did he get that name? Using WMD on the Kurds for one thing.”
You mean the chemical weapons Reagan & Rumsfeld provided Iraq? The same folks who then ignored the Kurdish atrocity for 2 years until it proved useful as propaganda in the 1st Gulf War?
Posted by: Ryan C | Dec 8, 2008
_____________________________________
Reagan supplied chemical weapons to Iraq?
At first, you say there were no WMD at all, then you say there WERE. They were supplied by the Republicans (Obviously Clinton, the good guy, never supplied any).
Can you show me evidence where Reagan gave chemical weapons to Chemical Ali?
The fact remains that the Democrats in 2002 voted in favor of the Iraq War. IF Bush really lied, he was either the greatest liar in the world or the Democrats were the dumbest beings on two legs.
Since most Democrats are lawyers, they are trained to know a lie when they see one. The fact that ALL of them voted along with Bush doesn’t make them look very smart.

Bush and Cheney are the biggest crooks who ever walked the earth. They clearly lied. Powell found out the truth and broke from them.
The Repubs lie, lie, lie

i’d suggest EVERYONE TAKE A DEEP BREATH…there…No go READ the JOINT RESOLUTION CAREFULLY!!!
The JR speaks of weapons PROGRAMS OR CAPABILITIES 5XS
weapons INSPECTORS-MENTIONED 3XS
stockpiles of CHEMICAL WEAPONS (in the PAST TENSE–”HAD”)-0NCE
there are also several other rferences to WMDs in terms of already using them, having the williness to use them, etc.
The EMPHASIS of the JR was on taking out the WMD PROGRAMS and WMD CAPABILITIES–actual “stockpiles” are referred to in the PAST tense!!!
And, as we know from both the Kay & Duelfer reports, we took care of those dual use facilities, destroyed those PROSCRIBED missiles & their engines, and took apart whatever we found related to WMD PROGRAMS.
Where is the lie IN THE LEGAL DOCUMENT, SIGNED OFF BY BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS??
“

This unsubstaniated accussation is
debunked by the following:
A Pause for Hindsight
Published: July 16, 2004
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ver the last few months, this page has repeatedly demanded that President Bush acknowledge the mistakes his administration made when it came to the war in Iraq, particularly its role in misleading the American people about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and links with Al Qaeda. If we want Mr. Bush to be candid about his mistakes, we should be equally open about our own.
During the run-up to the war, The Times ran dozens of editorials on Iraq, and our insistence that any invasion be backed by “broad international support” became a kind of mantra. It was the administration’s failure to get that kind of consensus that ultimately led us to oppose the war.
But we agreed with the president on one critical point: that Saddam Hussein was concealing a large weapons program that could pose a threat to the United States or its allies. We repeatedly urged the United Nations Security Council to join with Mr. Bush and force Iraq to disarm.
As we’ve noted in several editorials since the fall of Baghdad, we were wrong about the weapons. And we should have been more aggressive in helping our readers understand that there was always a possibility that no large stockpiles existed.
At the time, we believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding large quantities of chemical and biological weapons because we assumed that he would have behaved differently if he wasn’t. If there were no weapons, we thought, Iraq would surely have cooperated fully with weapons inspectors to avoid the pain of years under an international embargo and, in the end, a war that it was certain to lose.
That was a reasonable theory, one almost universally accepted in Washington and widely credited by diplomats all around the world. But it was only a theory. American intelligence had not received any on-the-ground reports from Iraq since the Clinton administration resorted to punitive airstrikes in 1998 and the U.N. weapons inspectors were withdrawn. The weapons inspectors who returned in 2002 found Iraq’s records far from transparent, and their job was never made easy. But they did not find any evidence of new weapons programs or stocks of prohibited old ones. When American intelligence agencies began providing them tips on where to look, they came up empty.
It may be that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stockpiles of banned weapons under the assumption that he could restart his program at a later date. His cat-and-mouse game with the weapons inspectors may have been the result of paranoia, or an attempt to flaunt his toughness before the Iraqi people. But we’re not blaming ourselves for failing to understand the thought process of an unpredictable dictator. Even if we had been aware before the war of the total bankruptcy of the American intelligence estimates on Iraq, we could not have argued with any certainty that there were no chemical and biological weapons.
But we do fault ourselves for failing to deconstruct the W.M.D. issue with the kind of thoroughness we directed at the question of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, or even tax cuts in time of war. We did not listen carefully to the people who disagreed with us. Our certainty flowed from the fact that such an overwhelming majority of government officials, past and present, top intelligence officials and other experts were sure that the weapons were there. We had a groupthink of our own.
By the time the nation was on the brink of war, we did conclude that whatever the risk of Iraq’s weaponry, it was outweighed by the damage that could be done by a pre-emptive strike against a Middle Eastern nation that was carried out in the face of wide international opposition. If we had known that there were probably no unconventional weapons, we would have argued earlier and harder that invading Iraq made no sense.
Saddam Hussein was indisputably a violent and vicious tyrant, but an unprovoked attack that antagonized the Muslim world and fractured the international community of peaceful nations was not the solution. There were, and are, equally brutal and potentially more dangerous dictators in power elsewhere. Saddam Hussein and his rotting army were not a threat even to the region, never mind to the United States.
Now that we are in Iraq, we must do everything possible to see that the country is stabilized before American forces are withdrawn. But that commitment should be based on honesty. Just as we cannot undo the invasion, we cannot pretend that it was a good idea — even if it had been well carried out.
Congress would never have given President Bush a blank check for military action if it had known that there was no real evidence that Iraq was likely to provide aid to terrorists or was capable of inflicting grave damage on our country or our allies. Many politicians who voted to authorize the war still refuse to admit that they made a mistake. But they did. And even though this page came down against the invasion, we regret now that we didn’t do more to challenge the president’s assumptions.