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Banned
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Eh, maybe none of these distinctions really matter individually, but for me they add up to the point where a statement like "they lied about WMD" is just plain false.
(Unless, as I said, I missed the conclusive thread.)...
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Here are some stats in response to your questions, Sticky:
Quote:
http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot....hip-moves.html
Monday, March 20, 2006
Partisanship moves
..Republican identification was 34.6% on January 1, 2005 and 31.0% as of March 12, 2006..
....These estimates are based on samples of adults. The 2004 exit polls estimated a Republican share of 37% among actual voters, a modest advantage for Republican turnout..
...When pooled across polling houses, and taking account of house effects, the estimate is that Democratic identification is statistically flat over this time period, with a non-significant decline of 0.4%. By these estimates, Democrats made up 32.9% of the adult population on January 1, 2005 and 32.5% on March 12, 2006. Here the gap with the 2004 exit polls is larger. The exit polls estimated that Democrats and Republicans both made up 37% of the voters on election day...
Based on the model, Independents have moved from 29.2% at the start of 2005 to 33.8% as of March 2006, a 4.6 percentage point increase..
http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot....-trend-at.html
...Newsweek headlines "How low can he go?" We looked at that a while back in this post. One of the keys I pointed out then was the support presidents enjoy from their own supporters. Past unpopular presidents have suffered a substantial loss of support from their party. President Bush has been a significant exception to this. His lows among Democrats and independents have not been accompanied by similar declines among Republicans. When the post was written in March 2006 approval stood at 38%. Approval among Democrats was 10% back then while independents reported 27% approval. These were much lower than history would predict for a president at 38%. The huge difference was that <b>Republican support in March 2006 was an amazing 82%.</b>
That support has been slipping in recent months. The Newsweek poll finds approval at 6% among Democrats, 23% among independents and 60% among Republicans. The GOP partisans still are providing more support than we might expect, but it is clearly no longer the reservoir of support it once was. (Gallup now finds Democrats at 8%, independents at 24% and Republicans at 73%...
...Because approval among Democrats is so low, further declines there can make little difference to the overall level. Independents could matter a bit more, but how low approval ultimately goes is going to depend on Republicans' willingness to continue to stand by the president...
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Sticky, if you've read my posts, I've documented extensively why I believe that the RNC and the republican party, at least on a level that includes many elected and appointed federal officials, could be reasonably described as bearing an uncanny resemblance to a RICO conspiracy. Abramoff, K Street, gutting of the house ethics committee, CNP influence over the republican presidential candidate nominating process, and the CNP tie in with the religious fundamemtalists, Kay Cole James and her 150 executive branch hires from Pat Robertson's comparatively tiny Regents University, the implosion of the DOJ under Gonzales, investigations, indictments, and convictions of almost exclusively republican senators and congressman, the abandonment of any pretense of congressional oversight of the executive branch by the house and the senate, until this year, acceptance of illegal wiretaps, Gitmo abuses, unprecedented executive branch secrecy, the push by the republican house majority in 2000 to not renew the special prosecutor statute, vote suppression, dismantling of voting rights abuse investigation by the DOJ civil rights division, the Federalist Society's influence....an organization of 34,000 almost exclusively republican lawyers that wields so much influence over the republican controlled executive branch, yet is so controversial that SCOTUS nominee John Roberts felt it necessary to deny his ties with the society, the "tie in" between politcal extermists funded "think tanks" like Heritage.org and AEI.org, and "research groups" like those created by Brett Bozell III. with the RNC and it's political agenda.....yeah....I've posted about all of it....with much supporting references.....almost all of it unchallenged by Sticky....who now challenges the very concept that all of it fits a pattern of a RICO organization, and I've only described the tip of the iceberg here....
What does it all look like to you, Sticky....just a random series of unconnected groups who independently present their research, message, and agenda to the rest of us curious and politcally oriented Americans?
Pick a point that I've made.....challenge it, present an argument counter to mine, support it with sources that make it more persuasive....i.e., let's have a politcal discussion in a political forum which goes beyond "host" presenting "in depth" arguments that go unchallenged or are replied to with "one liners" of opinions supported by ??????????
FoolThemAll.... we've been over this more times than I can count. I'll distill it here, and....if you sicerely are interested.....you can read the "middle"...the supporting articles, official quotes, and news reporting....detailed in several "definitive posts":
The case that they knowingly and intentionally "lied us into war" is supported by this example....with the background reporting that Powell was reluctant to deliver this.....he did not author it....it came from the people in the executive branch, including Bush and Cheney, who pushed the invasion of Iraq agenda:
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0030205-1.html
For Immediate Release
February 5, 2003
Colin Powell View webcast
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Counc
...But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
Colin Powell slide 39
Slide 39
POWELL: You see a picture of this camp.
The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch--image a pinch of salt--less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote, there is no cure. It is fatal.
Colin Powell slide 40
Slide 40
Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000 this agent offered Al Qaida safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaida from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain their today.
Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of north east Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.
During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These Al Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.
Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with Al Qaida. These denials are simply not credible. Last year an Al Qaida associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was, quote, ``good,'' that Baghdad could be transited quickly....
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FoolThemAll.....and Sticky, for that matter....how can we have a REAL discussion, unless we can all agree that a "reasonable person" would react with outrage and incredulity to the idea that practically everything that Powell told the assembled world body in the Feb. 2003 quotes above, was reduced to this by late 2006:
Quote:
....Q Saddam Hussein knew they were there; that's it for the relationship?
MR. SNOW: That's pretty much it...
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....and this:
Quote:
MARTHA: Mr. President, you have said throughout the war in Iraq and building up to the war in Iraq that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi and al Qaeda. A Senate Intelligence Committee report a few weeks ago said there was no link, no relationship, and that the CIA knew this and issued a report last fall. And yet a month ago, you were still saying there was a relationship. Why did you keep saying that? Why do you continue to say that? And do you still believe that?
<h3>BUSH: The point I was making to Ken Herman’s question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror, and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq</h3>...I never said there was an operational relationship.
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...and Cheney was still saying this in April, 2007, repeating what he, Bush, and Rice were saying in autumn, 2006:
Quote:
Q Are you saying that you believe fighting in Iraq has prevented terrorist attacks on American soil? And if so, why, since there has not been a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq established?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the fact of the matter is there are connections. Mr. Zarqawi, who was the lead terrorist in Iraq for three years, fled there after we went into Afghanistan. He was there before we ever went into Iraq.
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....a "definitive post" challenging Powell's Feb., 2003 UN presentation statements, quoted above, and support for the accusation that Cheney and Bush continued making the false assertions in the above statements, in 2006 and 2007, long after they were refuted as relevant reasons to invade Iraq:
April 7, 2007:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...76&postcount=1
Can the president and his VP tell lies for nearly 5 years, to jusitfy the invasion and continued sacrifices of US troops in Iraq, and <b>continue to tell these lies</b>, and simply get away with it? Why? How do you tolerate that? I know what I know, and I'm having trouble just accepting it....aren't you?....
...In the lower part of this post, I've provided more than ample support for the premise that only an incompetent or a liar would link al Zarqawi to Saddam, this way, with what was known eight months ago:
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060821.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
August 21, 2006
Press Conference by the President
White House Conference Center Briefing Room
...Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned 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?
THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- <h3>who had relations with Zarqawi.</h3>
(Watch him deliver the "Zarqawi" lie in a 2 minute video, here:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Bus...-08-21-062.wmv )
Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. The idea is to try to help change the Middle East.
Now, look, 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 the 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 everything was just fine until we arrived, and kind of "we're going to 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.
Q What did Iraq have to do with that?
THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what?
Q The attack on the World Trade Center?
THE PRESIDENT: Nothing, except for it's part of -- and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a -- the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody has 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. .......
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3 weeks later, last September, when some of the the determinations about Iraq of the Senate intel. committee were finally released, Mr. Cheney spoke to Tim Russert and said the opposite of what the Senate intel. report and the CIA had concluded:
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17970427/
Saddam’s pre-war ties to al-Qaeda discounted
By R. Jeffrey Smith
<b>Updated: 10:56 a.m. ET April 6, 2007</b>
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.
The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.
The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June....
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...040601116.html
Cheney Sticks to His Delusions
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, April 6, 2007; 1:20 PM
Faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, even President Bush has backed off his earlier inflammatory assertions about links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
But Vice President Cheney yesterday, in an interview with right-wing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, continued to stick to his delusional guns. click to show
Cheney told Limbaugh that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading al-Qaeda operations in Iraq before the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
"[A]fter we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney said. "And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq." (Think Progress has the audio clip.)
But Cheney's narrative is wrong from beginning to end. For instance, Zarqawi was not an al-Qaeda member until after the war. Rather, intelligence sources now agree, he was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents. And although he worked hard to inflame sectarian violence after the invasion, he certainly didn't start it.
As it happens, just in case anyone needed more evidence of the spuriousness of Cheney's views, yesterday also marked the release of yet another report confirming that that al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government were not working together before the invasion.
The report also further documents how Cheney willfully ignored reliable intelligence in favor of broadcasting invented assertions emerging from a rogue Defense Department office -- a habit he apparently has yet to break...
....According to the report, "a key Pentagon office -- run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith -- had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S. intelligence consensus disputed.
"The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was 'mature' and 'symbiotic,' marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics."
Those conclusions, running so contrary to traditional intelligence findings, were "leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine before the war" and then "were publicly praised by Cheney as the best source of information on the topic." <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/04/06/BL2007040601116_2.html">page 2</a> |
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0070405-3.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
April 5, 2007
Interview of the Vice President by Rush Limbaugh, The Rush Limbaugh Show
Via Telephone
1:07 P.M. EDT
Q It's always a great privilege to have the Vice President, Dick Cheney, with us. Mr. Vice President, welcome once again to our program.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you, Rush. It's good to be back on.....
.....Q It may not just be Iraq. Yesterday I read that Ike Skelton, who chairs -- I forget the name of the committee -- in the next defense appropriations bill for fiscal '08 is going to actually remove the phrase "global war on terror," because they don't think it's applicable. They want to refer to conflicts as individual skirmishes. But they're going to try to rid the defense appropriation bill -- and, thus, official government language -- of that term. Does that give you any indication of their motivation or what they think of the current plight in which the country finds itself?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure -- well, it's just flawed thinking. I like Ike Skelton; I worked closely with Ike when I was Secretary of Defense. He's Chairman of the Armed Services Committee now. Ike is a good man. He's just dead wrong about this, though. Think about -- <b>just to give you one example, Rush, remember Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, al Qaeda affiliate; ran a training camp in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, then migrated -- after we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene,</b> and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al Qaeda operating in Iraq. And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq. ......
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That was Cheney, this week, and this was Bush, himself, in 2002 and 2003:
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20030208.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 8, 2003
President's Radio Address
.... One of the greatest dangers we face is that weapons of mass destruction might be passed to terrorists who would not hesitate to use those weapons. Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. And an al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in acquiring poisons and gases.
We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad..
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...030206-17.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 6, 2003
President Bush: "World Can Rise to This Moment"
....One of the greatest dangers we face is that weapons of mass destruction might be passed to terrorists, who would not hesitate to use those weapons. Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.
We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. The network runs a poison and explosive training center in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad. The head of this network traveled to Baghdad for medical treatment and stayed for months. Nearly two dozen associates joined him there and have been operating in Baghdad for more than eight months.
The same terrorist network operating out of Iraq is responsible for the murder, the recent murder, of an American citizen, an American diplomat, Laurence Foley. The same network has plotted terrorism against France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Republic of Georgia, and Russia, and was caught producing poisons in London. The danger Saddam Hussein poses reaches across the world......
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds
By Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A01
...... Then, in declaring the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1, Bush linked Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions."
Moments later, Bush added: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th -- the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got." .......
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....and Bush again, here:
Quote:
http://www.factcheck.org/article203.html
June 22, 2004
......What Bush and Cheney Said
Less open to interpretation is what Bush and Cheney said in the past. They both described a strong, dangerous connection between Saddam and al Qaeda.
In his State of the Union address shortly before the war began, Bush said "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda," and suggested that Saddam might provide terrorists with nuclear or biological weapons:
Bush (Jan. 28, 2003): Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.
Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes.
And earlier, Cheney described Iraq as the "geographic base of the terrorists" and "the place where we want to take on those elements that have come against the United States." Cheney spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press"
Cheney (Sept. 14, 2003): If we’re successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it’s not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it’s not a safe haven for terrorists, <b>now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11 . . .
So what we do on the ground in Iraq, our capabilities here are being tested in no small measure, but this is the place where we want to take on the terrorists. This is the place where we want to take on those elements that have come against the United States</b>, and it’s far more appropriate for us to do it there and far better for us to do it there than it is here at home........
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My "evidence" that these statements are false:
From my Sept. 12, 2006 post:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...24&postcount=3
We offer here, mostly what Bozell branded as, reporting of the "Liberal Media".
With a member of our family in the military, and now about to be deployed to the M.E., we wanted to know who to believe.
The "news" is, that it is not Mr. Cheney:
On sunday, he was saying this, during a prominent news program, telecast:
(From my last post, at the bottom)
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060910.html
.....Q Then why in the lead-up to the war was there the constant linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a different issue. Now, there's a question of whether or not al Qaeda -- whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11; separate and apart from that is the issue of whether or not there was a historic relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. The basis for that is probably best captured in George Tenet's testimony before the Senate intel committee in open session, where he said specifically that there was a pattern, a relationship that went back at least a decade between Iraq and al Qaeda......
........we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went into 9/11 -- then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of '02......
.........Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, a poisons facility run by an Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al Qaeda......
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<b>Cheney was saying it, even though this was reported, just two days before:</b>
Quote:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2410591
By JIM ABRAMS, AP Writer Fri Sep 8, 12:17 PM ET
WASHINGTON - There's no evidence
Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaida associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on
Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts
President Bush's justification for going to war.....
.....It discloses for the first time an October 2005
CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates."......
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<b>The rest of this post consists of 17 news article excerpts that refute Mr. Cheney's assertions to Tim Russert last September, and to Rush Limbaugh, this week....</b>
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Posted May 2, 2006:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...8&postcount=63
Posted May 2, 2006:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=64
Posted June 26, 2006:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...8&postcount=22
Posted Sept. 9, 2006:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...93&postcount=7
Posted Sept. 15, 2006:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=47
.....and this article:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/po...tel.ready.html
Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Doubts
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: November 6, 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.
The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.
The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.’’
click to read the rest... click to show
The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Levin said the new evidence of early doubts about Mr. Libi’s statements dramatized what he called the Bush administration’s misuse of prewar intelligence to try to justify the war in Iraq. That is an issue that Mr. Levin and other Senate Democrats have been seeking to emphasize, in part by calling attention to the fact that the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee has yet to deliver a promised report, first sought more than two years ago, on the use of prewar intelligence.
An administration official declined to comment on the D.I.A. report on Mr. Libi......
....The report issued by the Senate intelligence committee in July 2004 questioned whether some versions of intelligence report prepared by the C.I.A. in late 2002 and early 2003 raised sufficient questions about the reliability of Mr. Libi’s claims.
But neither that report nor another issued by the Sept. 11 commission made any reference to the existence of the earlier and more skeptical 2002 report by the D.I.A., which supplies intelligence to military commanders and national security policy makers. As an official intelligence report, labeled DITSUM No. 044-02, the document would have circulated widely within the government, and it would have been available to the C.I.A., the White House, the Pentagon and other agencies. It remains unclear whether the D.I.A. document was provided to the Senate panel.
In outlining reasons for its skepticism, the D.I.A. report noted that Mr. Libi’s claims lacked specific details about the Iraqis involved, the illicit weapons used and the location where the training was to have taken place...
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and in that same thread, I followed up my first post with this....I can't fit the supporting articles in the post, but they can be viewed here:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...2&postcount=13
....<b>so who is lying in these two contradictory pieces? Gen. Delong in 2006 when he said that Saddam had to have approved the "poison camp" BECAUSE "nothing happens in Iraq without Saddam knowing about it, so we knew that was true. ...." and in his statement that "We almost took them out three months before the Iraq war started. We almost took that thing, but we were so concerned that the chemical cloud from there could devastate the region that we chose to take them by land rather than by smart weapons. "</b>....or was MSNBC lying to us in Aprl 2003 when they reported: "The territory of northern Iraq where the traces of ricin were detected is not under the control of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein." .....and:
"MSNBC.com’s samples of ricin and botulinum, two deadly biological agents, were taken from the soles of a boot and a shoe recovered from the Sargat camp. The facility has been flattened by several Tomahawk cruise missiles, fired as part of the U.S. campaign against Ansar al-Islam.
The thick rubber boot twice tested positive for ricin, a toxin derived from castor beans. Ingesting a pinch of ricin, which causes shock and respiratory failure, can kill a human being within 72 hours. There is no cure.
A black running shoe, shredded by the U.S. bombing, tested positive for botulinum."
SO DELONG CONTRADiCTS MSNBC 3 YEARS AFTER iT'S REPORTiNG. WHO LIED ?.....
....I've shown you in this post, examples of lies that Gen. Delong told on a PBS video tape in 2006.....concerning the "poison camp" that Cheney lied about on Rush's show, just the other day.....in Delong's case, he contradicted the April 3, 2003 news reporting that said that the "camp" was bombed with cruise missles, and that it was located in an area in Northern Iraq that Saddam's government did not control....either via air or ground access.
Delong said that the camp could not be bombed, and that Saddam was responsible for the camp...three full years after the news reporting to the contrary.....
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I suggest that you read the entire post that contained this:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=55
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5280219/site/newsweek/
.................The first high-level Bush administration references to Zarqawi came in October 2002 when President Bush, in a speech in Cincinnati, laid out the case against Saddam’s regime by emphasizing what he described as “high-level contacts” between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda. One prominent example cited by the president was the fact that “one very senior Al Qaeda leader [had] ... received medical treatment in Baghdad this year”—a reference to Zarqawi. Then, in his February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell described Zarqawi as “an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.”
But just last week, in little-noticed remarks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld conceded that Zarqawi’s ties to Al Qaeda may have been much more ambiguous—and that he may have been more a rival than a lieutenant to bin Laden. Zarqawi “may very well not have sworn allegiance to [bin Laden]," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing. “Maybe he disagrees with him on something, maybe because he wants to be ‘The Man’ himself and maybe for a reason that’s not known to me.” <b>Rumsfeld added that, “someone could legitimately say he’s not Al Qaeda.”</b>
Rumsfeld’s comments essentially confirm the contents of a German police document, first reported by NEWSWEEK last year, that quoted a terrorist defector from Zarqawi’s network in Afghanistan describing the group as operating in “opposition to Al Qaeda.”....................
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....and even at the risk that I am using the term, "definitive" more loodely than you would, FoolThemAll, is it more unreasonable....or reasonable.... to describe this post as "definitive"? Please read all of the lower part of the post, after the documentation of "flip flopping" about capturing Bin Laden, andv about denying the policy of "staying the course".....it contains this, and much more:
Quote:
05-24-2007,
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...7&postcount=11
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060320-7.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
March 20, 2006
President Discusses War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom
.....Q Mr. President, at the beginning of your talk today you mentioned that you understand why Americans have had their confidence shaken by the events in Iraq. ....Before we went to war in Iraq we said there were three main reasons for going to war in Iraq: ....All three of those turned out to be false. My question is, how do we restore confidence that Americans may have in their leaders and to be sure that the information they are getting now is correct?
THE PRESIDENT: That's a great question. (Applause.) First, just if I might correct a misperception. I don't think we ever said -- at least I know I didn't say that there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein. We did say that he was a state sponsor of terror -- by the way, not declared a state sponsor of terror by me, but declared by other administrations. We also did say that Zarqawi, the man who is now wreaking havoc and killing innocent life, was in Iraq. .....but I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on America.....
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Mr. Bush was talking about "take threats before they fully materialize"......and when the "Zarqawi was there" declaration is exposed as a lie what remains to justify the invasion of iraq aside from illegal aggressive war?
Note how the Bush administration reacted to Sen. Levn's damning September 8, 2006 statement:
Quote:
http://www.senate.gov/~levin/newsroo....cfm?id=262690
News from Senator Carl Levin of Michigan
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 8, 2006
Contact: Press Office
Phone: 202.228.3685
Senate Floor Statement on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Phase II Report
Today the Senate Intelligence Committee is releasing two of the five parts of Phase II of the Committee’s inquiry into prewar intelligence. One of the two reports released today looks at what we have learned after the attack on Iraq about the accuracy of prewar intelligence regarding links between Saddam Hussein and al Qa’ida. The report is a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration’s unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was linked with al Qa’ida, the perpetrators of the 9-11 attack.....
......The Administration statements also flew in the face of the CIA’s January 2003 assessment that al-Libi was not in position to know whether training had taken place.
So here’s what we’ve got.
<h3>The President says Saddam had a relationship with Zarqawi.</h3> The Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA concluded in 2005 that “the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.”
<h3>The President said Saddam and al Qa’ida were “allies.”</h3> The Intelligence Committee found that prewar intelligence shows that Saddam Hussein“viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime.” Indeed, the Committee found that postwar intelligence showed that he “refused all requests from al-Qa'ida to provide material or operational support.”
The Vice President called the claim that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta met with the Iraqi intelligence officer “credible” and “pretty much confirmed.” The Intelligence Committee found the intelligence shows that “no such meeting occurred.”
<h3>The President said that Iraq provided training in poisons and gasses to al Qa’ida.</h3> The Intelligence Committee found that postwar intelligence supported the prewar intelligence assessment that there was no credible reporting on al-Qa'ida training at “anywhere” in Iraq and that the terrorist who made the claim of training was “likely intentionally misleading his debriefers” when he said Iraq had provided poisons and gasses training.
But the Administration’s efforts to create the false impression that Iraq and al Qa’ida were linked didn’t stop with just statements. One of the most significant disclosures in the Intelligence Committee’s report is the account of <h3>the Administration’s successful efforts to obtain the support of CIA Director George Tenet to help them make that false case.</h3>r....
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The following is a compilaton of their reaction to Levin and the senate committee report. it is more or less in chronological order. i detailed more of it in the OP of this thread......
Quote:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,213211,00.html
Transcript: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on 'FOX News Sunday'
Sunday, September 10, 2006
WASHINGTON — The following is a partial transcript of the Sept. 10, 2006, edition of "FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace":
.....WALLACE: ....Here's what the president said in October of 2002.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: And in March 2003, just before the invasion, you said, talking about Iraq, "and a very strong link to training Al Qaeda in chemical and biological techniques."
But, Secretary Rice, a Senate committee has just revealed that in February of 2002, months before the president spoke, more than a year, 13 months, before you spoke, that the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded this — and let's put it up on the screen.
"Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful CB" — that's chemical or biological — "knowledge or assistance."
Didn't you and the president ignore intelligence that contradicted your case?
RICE: What the president and I and other administration officials relied on — and you simply rely on the central intelligence. The director of central intelligence, George Tenet, gave that very testimony, that, in fact, there were ties going on between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime going back for a decade. Indeed, the 9/11 Commission talked about contacts between the two.
We know that Zarqawi was running a poisons network in Iraq. We know that Zarqawi ordered the killing of an American diplomat in Jordan from Iraq. There were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Now, are we learning more now that we have access to people like Saddam Hussein's intelligence services? Of course we're going to learn more. But clearly ...
WALLACE: But, Secretary Rice, this report, if I may, this report wasn't now. This isn't after the fact. This was a Defense Intelligence Agency report in 2002.
Two questions: First of all, did you know about that report before you made your statement?
RICE: Chris, we relied on the reports of the National Intelligence Office, the NIO, and of the DCI. That's what the president and his central decision-makers rely on. There are ...
WALLACE: Did you know about this report?
RICE: ... intelligence reports and conflicting intelligence reports all the time. That's why we have an intelligence system that brings those together into a unified assessment by the intelligence community of what we're looking at.
That particular report I don't remember seeing. But there are often conflicting intelligence reports.
I just want to refer you, though, to the testimony of the DCI at the time about the activities. ...
WALLACE: That's the head of central intelligence.
RICE: Yes, head of central intelligence — that were going on between Al Qaeda and between Iraq.
But let me make a broader point. The notion, somehow — and I've heard this — the notion, somehow, that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power seems to me quite ludicrous...
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060912-2.html
Office of the Press Secretary
September 12, 2006
Press Briefing by Tony Snow
...Q Well, one more, Tony, just one more. Do you believe -- does the President still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to Zarqawi or al Qaeda before the invasion?
MR. SNOW: The President has never said that there was a direct, operational relationship between the two, and this is important. Zarqawi was in Iraq.
Q There was a link --
MR. SNOW: Well, and there was a relationship -- there was a relationship in this sense: Zarqawi was in Iraq; al Qaeda members were in Iraq; they were operating, and in some cases, operating freely from Iraq. .. No. There was no direct operational relationship, but there was a relationship. They were in the country, and I think you understand that the Iraqis knew they were there. That's the relationship.
<h2>Q Saddam Hussein knew they were there; that's it for the relationship?
MR. SNOW: That's pretty much it.</h2>
Quote:
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/15/bush-zarqawi-iraq/
Bush Rewrites History on Zarqawi Statements
During today’s press conference, ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz asked Bush why he continues to say Saddam “had relations with Zarqawi,” despite the Senate Intelligence Report findings that Hussein “did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.” Bush replied: “I never said there was an operational relationship.” Watch it:
In fact, Bush has repeatedly asserted that Saddam “harbored” and “provided safe-haven” to Zarqawi:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040617-3.html
BUSH: [Saddam] was a threat because he provided safe-haven for a terrorist like Zarqawi… [6/17/04]
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040923-8.html
BUSH: [Saddam] is a man who harbored terrorists - Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Zarqawi. [9/23/04]
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0030306-8.html
BUSH: [Zarqawi’s] a man who was wounded in Afghanistan, received aid in Baghdad, ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen, USAID employee, was harbored in Iraq. [3/6/03]
Transcript:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060915-2.html
MARTHA: Mr. President,..... you were still saying there was a relationship. Why did you keep saying that? Why do you continue to say that? And do you still believe that?
<h3>BUSH: The point I was making to Ken Herman’s question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror, and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq</h3>...I never said there was an operational relationship.
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....and Cheney was "at it" again a month later:
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...061019-10.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
October 19, 2006
Satellite Interview of the Vice President by WSBT-TV, South Bend, Indiana
2nd Congressional District -
Representative Chris Chocola
...Q Are you saying that you believe fighting in Iraq has prevented terrorist attacks on American soil? And if so, why, since there has not been a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq established?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the fact of the matter is there are connections. Mr. Zarqawi, who was the lead terrorist in Iraq for three years, fled there after we went into Afghanistan. He was there before we ever went into Iraq. ...
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Last edited by host; 06-28-2007 at 12:17 AM..
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