Did President Bush lie to the American People? Did our Intelligence Agencies fail us?

ME | 2/8/04 | mjy1288

[MJY1288]

All you have to do is remove the willful distortions of the facts in the press lately and look at this whole thing realistically, I'll try to do so now

1. We know for a FACT that Saddam Hussein possessed and used both Chemical and Biological agents against his enemies and his own people. This is FACT

2. We know that he was trying to develop a Nuclear Weapon before Israel bombed their Reactor in the 1980's... FACT

3. We know that his Chemical Weapons development went undetected until after the Gulf War and undetected by Weapons Inspectors until his Son-in-Law defected and told us where they were being developed.... FACT

4. We know that after 6 years of obstruction, the U.N. Weapons inspectors could not find and destroy the WMD's Saddam himself declared he had, in 1998 the U.N. Inspectors left Iraq without destroying everything that Saddam still possessed....... FACT

5. We know that Saddam never verified the destruction of the unaccounted for WMD's he admitted having... FACT

6. We know that after 12 years of U.N. Sanctions and enforcing the No-Fly Zones, Saddam still never accounted for the WMD's he admitted having..... FACT

7. We know that after Saddam was overthrown, David Kay has reported that Saddam had "Many Clandestine Laboratories" that were in violation of U.N. Resolution 1441, and all of the other 16 U.N. Resolutions ......FACT

8. We know that Saddam was compensating the families of suicide bombers in Israel in the amount of 25,000.00 U.S. Dollars.... FACT

9. We know that after the Gulf War in 1991, we found out that Saddam was much closer to developing a Nuclear Weapon that we had estimated…. FACT

After all of this... we are supposed to believe that Saddam voluntarily destroyed his WMD's after we left Iraq in 1998? The only intelligent conclusion anyone with half a brain can come up with is that either we have yet to find them in Iraq, or Saddam had them moved to Syria, and since many in his Regime fled to Syria, my guess is that they are buried in Syria.

No President who respects the Oath he takes to defend this Country could ignore these facts in a post 9/11 world. It’s not like Iraq was some third world country that we had never had problems with before, in fact, we lost several hundred U.S. Soldiers in Operation Desert Storm and Saddam had agreed to terms of a cease fire that would allow him to remain in power.

After 12 years of violating every agreement he made after the Gulf War and as a Nation who expects the world to take us seriously, we needed to remove him for the sake of our fallen soldiers whose blood was used to sign that cease fire in 1991. For that reason alone, WE DID THE RIGHT THING.. Think about this...... :-)

Have you heard anything about Syria lately? any statements from the State Dept. or Defense Dept.? The answer is NO, Methinks, we are in the middle of serious negotiations with Syria as I type this. Much like the ones we were in with Libya before they capitulated. My question is... Where is Richard Armitage? he is the State Departments "Heavy Hand" and he is one hell of an asset to this country

[MEG33]

BUMP!

[CyberAnt]

"compensating the families of suicide bombers in Israel"

I would only change this to show that the bombers came from Palentine.

[blondee123]

All his WMD are in Syria!!!

[hoosiermama]

Thanks for all your work!

[maica]

Pre 9/11 it was just as important as after that we act, or should have acted. If clinton had done his job and stopped the growth of al-qaeda after Somalia then there would have been no need to find and destroy the numerous cells scattered throughout the world. The towers would still be standing and the world would be a different and better place now.

The bolded words just leapt off the page. I am going to say this to every "war is not the answer" person I meet.

[Alberta's Child]

Yes you are a democrat whether you know it or not.

Actually, my position on this isn't much different than that of George Will, who is hardly a Democrat in any sense of the word. I'll paraphrase his position:

"I was behind this war from the start, based on everything the Bush Administration said in late 2002 and early 2003 in the months leading up to it. Based on what we know now, I still think the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, regardless of whether we find any WMDs or not. But let's be honest here -- if I had known in early 2003 that there would not be any WMDs found in Iraq, I never would have supported the war in the first place."

The only difference between George Will and me is that he truly believed in 2003 that there would be WMDs found in Iraq. That's why he's disappointed today -- and I'm not.

Let's remember something here, and consider the implications of what the justification for this war in Iraq are: If Iraq really DID have all of those WMDs, and the U.S. never did anything about them for ten years (more than twice as long as this country's involvement in World War II, for crying out loud!, then who is at fault here? The United Nations? France and Germany?

WOW! What have you been smoking?

Before 1991, Iraq was one of the only Islamic countries in the world that openly permitted Christian groups to operate schools, hospitals, and other institutions. Interestingly, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz is not a Muslim but a Maronite or Chaldean Christian. You'd be hard-pressed to find another Islamic country that would allow a non-Muslim in any kind of position of authority like that.

In fact, if you were to go back and compare pre-1991 Iraq to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, you ought to conclude that the United States was on the wrong side in that war from Day One.

As to your last point do you think it smart to gut the government while at the same time going to war?

Now you're running around in a circular train of logic. If U.S. intelligence capabilities were so substantially diminished during the Clinton administration, then this country had no business using those intelligence capabilities as a pretext for war against another nation.

[freekitty]

The answer is no. Bush did not lie. Why would he?

[marylina]

Great post, Mike. I love to read your rants, because they are well-researched, to the point, and passionate. This one is a winner, and it is now being sent to friends.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I'm anxious for the dust to settle, too. Shouldn't be pretty for those self-righteous dims.

[goodnesswins]

I don't think "anyone in this administration or the CIA was 'mistaken' about what exactly Saddam Hussein's WMD capabilities were" either.....and, we'll find out, where oh, where they are, oh, about October 15th, 2004....heh...heh...heh. He had them.

[ericfoxlegal]

The Choice: Who Should we trust: Dubya or Saddam.

The Democrats keep saying that Bush misled the world about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and programs. If this was true, then the Democrats are saying conversely that Saddam Hussain was telling the truth when he said he did not have anything to hide- that he didn’t have any WMD or related programs. (By the way, we have found the scientists and the related program documentation of Saddam’s WMD program, but this is beside the point). So the Democrats are saying, we should not have believed George W. Bush about Saddam, but rather we should have believed Saddam Hussain. This is interesting; and unfortunately, extremely dangerous.

Either Saddam Hussain was misleading the world, or George W. Bush was misleading the world- both cannot have been lying; and they both could not have been telling the truth. The Democrats are saying that we should trust the security of the United States to a mass murderer. The Democrats are saying we should trust the security of the United States to someone you killed thousands of Kurds with chemical weapons. The Democrats are saying we should trust the security of the United States to Saddam used this billions of dollars to finance terrorism around the world. The Democrats are saying we should trust the security of the United States to someone who invaded two of his neighbor’s, Iran and Kuwait; causing well over a million deaths. The Democrats are saying that we should trust the security of the United States to someone who provided terrorists with a base of operations, including the terrorists who conducted the first attack on the Twin Towers in New York, Abdul Yazen. The Democrats want us to trust someone who harbored Abu Nadal- an organization with ties to al Qaeda. The Democrats want us to trust someone who’s intelligence officer met with Mohammad Atta in Prague just months before 9/11. The Democrats want us to trust our security to someone who trained terrorists on how to hijack an airplane with rudimentary weapons (knives) at Salman Pak, on the southern edge of Baghdad, where a Boeing 707 was parked for this purpose, as confirmed by two UN inspectors, three defectors, and our own satellite photographs. The Democrats want us to believe a man who provides money to the family of Hammas suicide bombers; Hammas was the same group who murdered 242 American Marines. The Democrats want voters to trust the security of the United States to a man who carried out extensive diplomatic, logistical, and financial cooperation with al Qaeda ever since the Gulf War, until his imminent demise in May of 2003- they even planned to cooperate on WMD according to a sealed 1998 U.S. indictment of Osama bin Laden. In short, the Democrats would have you believe Saddam Hussein, rather than George W. Bush.


The Democrats want us to believe Saddam when he says: “I’m not a perfect person, but I have nothing to do with al Qaeda.” The opposite is true as outlined in detail by an intelligence memo dated October 27, 2003, which was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller. Weekly Standard; November 24, 2003 issue: The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the source. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.

[TheWriterInTexas]

How about this? In January of 1998, Kerry co-sponsored concurrent resolution #71, authorizing the President to "take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs..." FACT.

On March 12, 1998, Kerry also co-sponsored concurrent resolution #78, relating to the indictment and prosecution of Saddam Hussein for war crimes and other crimes against humanity....FACT.

So when Kerry claims the President misled the American people by exaggerating claims of WMD, HE IS LYING....FACT.

[TheWriterInTexas]

Here are more facts:

Under the Clinton Administration, the number of field operatives was cut by 1/3, from 3K to 2K...FACT.

In 1994, President Clinton restructured the Policy Council on Counterintelligence and included lots of players; further, instead of keeping it under the CIA, he shifted it to him and his appointees. (This, and a great many other changes were made that placed control over sensitive material and products into the hands of people HE chose, not career civil servants).

After the Aldrich Ames Russian-spy case broke, Director of Counter Intelligence Woolsey recommended increasing the divide between the CIA and the FBI, so that sensitive information was not so easily accessible between the two.

Further, in 1995, the new Policy Council on Intelligence recommended the reduction of "dirty espionage," or intelligence gathered from unsavory characters (aka "The Toricelli Principle). The focus shifted dramatically to electronic intelligence gathering and fostering intelligence sharing relationships between ally countries and the United States. Unfortunately, Al Queda is predominantly low-tech and has lots of unsavory characters.

Inspectors were ejected in 1998, so we were relying on outside sources for intel. We did make discoveries in the severn months preceeding the war when inspectors were finally let back in. In the interim, we were relying on intelligence provided by other countries, particularly our ally, Great Britian. They provided us with the information that Saddam was attempting to purchase enriched uranium from an African country. Although the American media has criticized this report, England has NEVER backed away from it.

How bad was the intelligence gap? Under the Clinton Administration, we didn't know that either Pakistan or India was able to go nuclear until they detonated their warheads in May of 1998, 17 days apart from each other!

Moreover, the focus of the intelligence community, under the Clinton Administration, was against CHRISTIANS! In October of 1999, the FBI released a 35 page brief on "Project Megiddo," which labeled conservative Christians as a top threat to American national security. Yup, Clinton had his head up his ass! Just do a google search and I'm sure you'll find it.

In the early part of 2003, before we began bombing, the United Nations inspectors located a cache of ballistic missiles that exceeded the 150 KM limit imposed by the UN, which we considered the tip of the ice berg. Iraq, in 2002, claimed they didn't have these weapons...thus perpetuating a pattern of lying that was in place from a decade before!

[TheWriterInTexas]

The Republicans in Congress did not vote to approve sending troops. There were four separate votes on the matter. They voted no on three of them; however, they did vote on appropriations for the troops (since Clinton had already committed them and started sending them over).

This vote, to fund the troops who were already starting the engagement, was considered a "vote of approval." The Republicans tried to show defiance to the President but still support the troops. This political play backfired on them.

[MJY1288]

To be perfectly honest, I do not hold anyone responsible for believing that Saddam possessed stockpiles of WMD's. Any reasonable person could easily conclude that Saddam was hiding his weapon systems, nothing else could explain his reluctance to comply to the demands of the worlds leaders. Saddam Hussein was the strong man in the middle east and the only one who was capable of launching a serious attack on his neighbors, he did so before and nothing he had done would suggest he wouldn't do so again.

I'm looking forward to the Bush Administration to lay out these facts, and look into the Camera and ask each and everyone of us, what we would do in his shoes while facing the the threat that Saddam posed to the region and the world?, Saddam had no history of being anything but a murderous thug who if left alone would do everything within his power to rule the Middle East.

For all these spineless worms on the left that keep spouting that we had no business invading Iraq, I say that their vision for the future of this Country is incapable of seeing beyond the first row, and their ignorance of History restricts them from seeing beyond this mornings breakfast

[MJY1288]

Thanks for the posts, I have read most of these reports and I have also read some fist hand accounts by people close to Clinton, Like the Book "Dereliction of Duty" that lays out the case that Clinton was more interested in cheating at his golf game than he was getting OBL.

Here is something I will share with you, I can't back up what I say with anything I can post here on FR. But watch for a link between Libya's Col. Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein and the Nuclear equipment we have removed from Libya and taken to a secret location in Tennessee.

[Texasforever]

Great work. Use it in a letter to the editor.

[MJY1288]

When the reformist in Iran came to power, which was shortly after the bloody protest by the Students in Iran, Khatami (sp?) claimed he was a reformer and did hold elections that passed the smell test. The problem is that Khatami and the other so called reformist were lying and in the past 4 years the world has seen Iran move away from any kind of reform. The Mullahs cracked down on their people and enforced Islamic Law even more strictly. Today Iran is seeing more and more protest over the recent flawed elections and it's just a matter of time before the Mullah's find themselves being dragged through the streets of Tehran as the only justice they understand is delivered to them for a change