Posted on 07/11/2004 9:44:43 PM PDT by neverdem
The Senate vindicates President Bush and exposes Joe Wilson as a partisan fraud.
"The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities."
So reads Conclusion 83 of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. The Committee likewise found no evidence of pressure to link Iraq to al Qaeda. So it appears that some of the claims about WMD used by the Bush Administration and others to argue for war in Iraq were mistaken because they were based on erroneous information provided by the CIA.
A few apologies would seem to be in order. Allegations of lying or misleading the nation to war are about the most serious charge that can be leveled against a President. But according to this unanimous study, signed by Jay Rockefeller and seven other Democrats, those frequent charges from prominent Democrats and the media are without merit.
Or to put it more directly, if President Bush was "lying" about WMD, then so was Mr. Rockefeller when he relied on CIA evidence to claim in October 2002 that Saddam Hussein's weapons "pose a very real threat to America." Also lying at the time were John Kerry, John Edwards, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and so on. Yet Mr. Rockefeller is still suggesting on the talk shows, based on nothing but inference and innuendo, that there was undue political Bush "pressure" on CIA analysts.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
A sovereign state making an open declaration of ties with Al Qaeda is an invitation for trouble. Because we haven't obtained irrefutable evidence or testimony of operational ties doesn't mean they didn't exist. The number of contacts between them is quite impressive. Check these threads:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1145700/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1022083/posts
Plame's Input is Cited on Niger Mission [Joe Wilson lied about everything]
So the plan to attack Bush on this was hatched where? The DNC?
And the major media was in on it? Yep. I just checked the majors this morning (NY Times, Post, MSNBC)...and they are all subdued on Bush bashing. Talk about group think!
The Senate committe hat it wrong, as well.
Going back to the initial war decision. We can easily assume that almost any American looking at the big picture at the time would have come to the same conclusion. The reason the UN was sarching for WMDs in the first place was because Saddam was defiant, a known liar, and was certainly capable of repeating his past use of WMDs. We didn't trust him and we knew intelligence data are not 100%. So....post 9/11, is it a good idea to let Saddam continue? No.
Next decision. When?
Well, the leader needs to be conservative (100% correct) when it comes to the use of nukes so this decision becomes ASAP.
If we had known conclusively there were WMDs - there would not have been UN inspections, as the situation would have escalated to a "clear and present danger" and the world would have reacted differently. Also, if Hans found WMDs, no one would have been surprised, and again the reaction would have been war. Taking the appeasment road, as with Chamberland and Hitler would be argued, of course, but would fail. Who would listen to the left? They were dead wrong on Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, et al.
I remembered when the WMDs were not found and didn't look like anytime soon, they were going to be found.
I had two reactions: One was I was puzzled as to why Saddam pulled this rope-a-dope. The other was that, now we'd have to listen to the left's whining. Why? Because they'd look at this as a mistake, rather than the correct decision - for purly partisan reasons. If we would have found WMDs - they'd be clammering about something else. Perhaps a prison scandal, or post-war rebuilding problems.
And, now we find out the yellow cake issue was a partisan prank?
Goodness.
What happens when we take real world situations and plunk them into the frantic, frenzied, "the-sky-is-falling," paranoid mind of a liberal? We get panic. We get Michael Moore movies. We get a daily barrage of Bush-is-bad warnings from every media outlet. Bush is blamed. The military is blamed. The CIA is blamed. America is blamed. Conspiracy theories pop out of nowhere. Group think happens overnight. Kerry is God, himself and will save the world.
So now, that the left and the media have been discovered, who will expose them for the voters?
I'm so glad to see how they opened this article. If Joe Blow reads nothing but the first sentence, it will have an impact.
ping
BTTT
Back to re-read.
Excellent question....
As we know, many have been duped, and it's hard to undo the damage.
okay, so i understand this...cos im simple and irish
i am now expected to belive that saddam....
1. gave up wmd voluntarily...
2. fearing the UN, he decided it was better not to build new ones
3. his scientists fooled him by not building (not really the same as point 1 and 2 but i guess the left ignore this)
4. he destroyed what he had left
is that it?
okay, by a show of hands so we can clearly identify all the morons on the planet in one swoop...raise your hand if you believe saddam?
okay let me count...one , two...oh, okay noone...
1. his army left innoculations and chemcial suits as they ran for baghdad...anyone remember this?
2. the remote controlled planes? anyone remember this
3. the movement of trucks to syria. anyone rememeber this
4. the empty shell casings. anyone remember this?
5. the shell that 'just appeared'
6. the mortar rounds found but we are supossed to feel better cos they are old. anyone remeber this?
it is time to wake up. wishing it wernt so, doesnt make it alright to sleep.
he had/has them...and wither way i dont care...i still think the comedian had it right
strip saddam naked, drop him off by helo in a kurdish village with pots and pans tied to his neck and say you will be back in an hour to pick him up....
It could also be possible that John Q. Public is getting rather tired of the dissembling and exaggeration on both sides of the issue. Inflated excuses and inflated rhetoric abound on both sides. I expect a low turnout even if some issues do come out later, which I do not expect.
Just as the senate report has made Joe Wilson and friends out the fool, so the senate will be made the fool once again when the truth about what Iraq did with the missing stockpiles comes to light.
"Why ask Bush about it? He wasn't there. He was governing in Texas."
I could have sworn he was POTUS when Operation Iraqui Freedom was started. Oh well, live and learn.
Wasn't Tenet in charge of the CIA & said the case was a 'slam dunk' - so much for his basketball skills.
Are you kidding? Intuitively, most of us knew the truth all along. For the anti-war/demoncrat lobby though it was easy to infer all the venemous slander that they have been slinging around. They did this knowing that the truth, when revealed, would appear weak and unspectacular in comparison.
They have lied with full knowledge of the truth all along, and you think that they will apologize now???
The general public puts all tis on hold until the weeks before the election.
On the contrary, because the contacts were not at high levels or in the open, Dr. David Kay concluded that the situation in Iraq was more dangerous than suspected before the war. Many of the Iraqi scientific community -- of which there were over 30,000 working on the A-B-C (atomic, biological and chemical) weapons industry and various middlemen agents -- were doing a brisk business with terrorists in sharing capabilities.
In my judgment, that danger and the uncontrolled risk that WMD would be passed to terrorists completely justifies the US invasion to enforce the 17 UN resolutions Saddam had violated. We are indeed safer today.
Gore would have behaved just as had Clinton for the eight years because the Democrat base would never permit effective action to be taken. Kerry-Edwards likewise have raised every excuse in the book for why the US should not have gone to war. How could they possibly be trusted to act in America's national interests when they have to answer to Michael Moore and the other liberal loonies who back them?
bookmark bump
No, there aren't giant stockpiles found out in plain view. But to say no WMD have been found is a blatant falsehood.
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