On August 26, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney said, “Simply stated, there’s no doubt Iraq now has weapons of mass destruction.” There’s a reason Dick Cheney spends most of his time in hiding and it ain’t national security. What Mr. Cheney said was not qualified, it was not tentative, it was not equivocal, but it was – apparently – wrong. Question is: was he lying? Simply stated, yes he was.
Various American intelligence agencies had huge doubts about the existence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. If you carefully read the news all through last autumn and winter, those doubts by the CIA and NSA were duly reported. If you only glanced at the front page or worse, had your television tuned to Fox, you didn’t get the nuances from the intelligence community, all you got was White House and Pentagon spin.
On January 9, White House Spokesperson Ari Fleischer said, “We know for a fact there are weapons there.” The Bush administration is now in full backspin, talking about how the Iraq war wasn’t about weapons of mass destruction, it was about Iraqi liberation. Again, this is a lie. The only reason the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441 last autumn is because the US and UK were so aggressively talking up the alleged weapons of mass destruction. The key provision of 1441 was the reintroduction of UN inspectors to Iraq, inspectors to look for weapons of mass destruction. There is simply no way the Security Council would approve sanctions against a nation for failure to uphold democratic ideals, just look at some of the bad actors on the council – China, Russia. Heck, the US ambassador to the UN is an unindicted war criminal.
On March 17, George Bush said, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” I don’t know how to explain that statement. It was St. Patrick’s Day, maybe he was drunk. Maybe he said “possess and conceal some of the most legal weapons ever devised.” We do know the “intelligence gathered by this and other governments” was bogus. Some American documents were crude forgeries and the British dossier on Iraqi weapons was a phonied-up college term paper. This week members of the British Parliament announced the launch of an investigation into Tony Blair’s pre-war pronouncements on Iraqi weapons.
It has been two months since Saddam took a powder and still no weapons of mass destruction have turned up. The liars – I mean that is what they are – are going into full bunker mode. It was interesting to read the transcripts from the G-8 summit in Evian. Mr. Bush took pains to praise French President Jacques Chirac’s experience in Middle East politics. Mr. Chirac just smiled. He knows that as each successive week fails to produce a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon, he just looks smarter and smarter.
Tony Blair, in Warsaw last week, asked people to “have a little patience” on the weapons issue. Where was the patience talk in March, Tony?
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld speculated that perhaps there are no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction because maybe Saddam destroyed them before the war. Well… gee, isn’t that what we asked him to do, to prevent the war? Isn’t that the conclusion we should have drawn when the UN inspectors said they couldn’t find any evidence of weapons of mass destruction?
The biggest whopper was told by Mr. Bush, also in Poland, who said US forces “found the weapons of mass destruction,” because the Army found two trailers that might have been mobile biological laboratories. The Army did not, however, find any traces of chemical or biological weapons in the trailers. Far from “finding weapons of mass destruction,” this discovery may prove the opposite. If our forensic teams can’t find evidence of banned weapons in those trailers, how likely are they to find them anywhere?
You Can Quote Me
On August 26, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney said, “Simply stated, there’s no doubt Iraq now has weapons of mass destruction.” There’s a reason Dick Cheney spends most of his time in hiding and it ain’t national security. What Mr. Cheney said was not qualified, it was not tentative, it was not equivocal, but it was – apparently – wrong. Question is: was he lying? Simply stated, yes he was.
Various American intelligence agencies had huge doubts about the existence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. If you carefully read the news all through last autumn and winter, those doubts by the CIA and NSA were duly reported. If you only glanced at the front page or worse, had your television tuned to Fox, you didn’t get the nuances from the intelligence community, all you got was White House and Pentagon spin.
On January 9, White House Spokesperson Ari Fleischer said, “We know for a fact there are weapons there.” The Bush administration is now in full backspin, talking about how the Iraq war wasn’t about weapons of mass destruction, it was about Iraqi liberation. Again, this is a lie. The only reason the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441 last autumn is because the US and UK were so aggressively talking up the alleged weapons of mass destruction. The key provision of 1441 was the reintroduction of UN inspectors to Iraq, inspectors to look for weapons of mass destruction. There is simply no way the Security Council would approve sanctions against a nation for failure to uphold democratic ideals, just look at some of the bad actors on the council – China, Russia. Heck, the US ambassador to the UN is an unindicted war criminal.
On March 17, George Bush said, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” I don’t know how to explain that statement. It was St. Patrick’s Day, maybe he was drunk. Maybe he said “possess and conceal some of the most legal weapons ever devised.” We do know the “intelligence gathered by this and other governments” was bogus. Some American documents were crude forgeries and the British dossier on Iraqi weapons was a phonied-up college term paper. This week members of the British Parliament announced the launch of an investigation into Tony Blair’s pre-war pronouncements on Iraqi weapons.
It has been two months since Saddam took a powder and still no weapons of mass destruction have turned up. The liars – I mean that is what they are – are going into full bunker mode. It was interesting to read the transcripts from the G-8 summit in Evian. Mr. Bush took pains to praise French President Jacques Chirac’s experience in Middle East politics. Mr. Chirac just smiled. He knows that as each successive week fails to produce a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon, he just looks smarter and smarter.
Tony Blair, in Warsaw last week, asked people to “have a little patience” on the weapons issue. Where was the patience talk in March, Tony?
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld speculated that perhaps there are no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction because maybe Saddam destroyed them before the war. Well… gee, isn’t that what we asked him to do, to prevent the war? Isn’t that the conclusion we should have drawn when the UN inspectors said they couldn’t find any evidence of weapons of mass destruction?
The biggest whopper was told by Mr. Bush, also in Poland, who said US forces “found the weapons of mass destruction,” because the Army found two trailers that might have been mobile biological laboratories. The Army did not, however, find any traces of chemical or biological weapons in the trailers. Far from “finding weapons of mass destruction,” this discovery may prove the opposite. If our forensic teams can’t find evidence of banned weapons in those trailers, how likely are they to find them anywhere?