Posted on 10/07/2004 4:11:59 PM PDT by areafiftyone
WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) and his vice president conceded Thursday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the Iraq (news - web sites) war debate to a new issue — whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.
Ridiculing the Bush administration's evolving rationale for war, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) shot back: "You don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact."
Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) brushed aside the central findings of chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles ' — that Saddam not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, but that he had no capability of making any either — while Bush unapologetically defended his decision to invade Iraq.
"The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said as he prepared to fly to campaign events in Wisconsin. "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away."
Duelfer found no formal plan by Saddam to resume WMD production, but the inspector surmised that Saddam intended to do so if U.N. sanctions were lifted. Bush seized upon that inference, using the word "intent" three times in reference to Saddam's plans to resume making weapons.
This week marks the first time that the Bush administration has listed abuses in the oil-for-fuel program as an Iraq war rationale. But the strategy holds risks because some of the countries that could be implicated include U.S. allies, such as Poland, Jordan and Egypt. In addition, the United States itself played a significant role in both the creation of the program and how it was operated and overseen.
For his part, Cheney dismissed the significance of Duelfer's central findings, telling supporters in Miami, "The headlines all say `no weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad.' We already knew that."
The vice president said he found other parts of the report "more intriguing," including the finding that Saddam's main goal was the removal of international sanctions.
"As soon as the sanctions were lifted, he had every intention of going back" to his weapons program, Cheney said.
The report underscored that "delay, defer, wait, wasn't an option," Cheney said. And he told a later forum in Fort Myers, Fla., speaking of the oil-for-food program: "The sanctions regime was coming apart at the seams. Saddam perverted that whole thing and generated billions of dollars."
Yet Bush and Cheney acknowledged more definitively than before that Saddam did not have the banned weapons that both men had asserted he did — and had cited as the major justification before attacking Iraq in March 2003.
Bush has recently left the question open. For example, when asked in June whether he thought such weapons had existed in Iraq, Bush said he would "wait until Charlie (Duelfer) gets back with the final report."
In July, Bush said, "We have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction," a sentence construction that kept alive the possibility the weapons might yet be discovered.
On Thursday, the president used the clearest language to date nailing the question shut:
"Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there," Bush said. His words placed the blame on U.S. intelligence agencies.
In recent weeks, Cheney has glossed over the primary justification for the war, most often by simply not mentioning it. But in late January 2004, Cheney told reporters in Rome: "There's still work to be done to ascertain exactly what's there."
"The jury is still out," he told National Public Radio the same week, when asked whether Iraq had possessed banned weapons.
Duelfer's report was presented Wednesday to senators and the public with less than four weeks left in a fierce presidential campaign dominated by questions about Iraq and the war on terror.
In Bayonne, N.J., Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards (news - web sites) on Thursday called "amazing" Cheney's assertions that the Duelfer report justified rather than undermined Bush's decision to go to war, and he accused the Republican of using "convoluted logic."
Kerry, in a campaign appearance in Colorado, said: "The president of the United States and the vice president of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq."
A short time later, while campaigning in Wisconsin, Bush angrily responded to Kerry's charge he sought to "make up" a reason for war.
"He's claiming I misled America about weapons when he, himself, cited the very same intelligence about Saddam weapons programs as the reason he voted to go to war," Bush said. Citing a lengthy Kerry quote from two years ago on the menace Saddam could pose, Bush said: "Just who's the one trying to mislead the American people?"
It's really gettin' scarey these days, the big media have become another wing of the Democrat Party. They've declared all out warfare agaisnt conservatism and Christianity in America.
Who the f... cares the exact reason why we went to Iraq? Nothing Bush said would have appeased the vermin media. We are in a war with radical Islam and Saddam was the radical tyrant of an aggressive Islamic nation. He once possessed and used WMD...that's all anyone really needs to know.
Notice, if you will, it's not largely the common person making all the noise and divisive accusations, (like during the Vietnam era), it's the damn whoring press making all the trouble for our government. They're the ones drumming up all the unrest and divisions and acting like shills for the 'rat Party. It's not only getting annoying, it's getting downright dangerous for America.
But you will never hear that on the MSM and they will pound every day to try and discredit Bush. We just may in trouble here folks.
Better safe than sorry.
Thank you! I was looking for this list of quotes earlier today.
I completely agree with you. The greatest threat to America and our values is the leftist media. Another thing to remember....even when everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, was saying that Saddam had WMDs back in early 2003 (and I'm still not convinced he didn't have them back then, despite this Duelfer report), the left STILL opposed the war to drive him from power. So, faced with a consensus opinion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, the left in this nation, including a goodly percentage of the news media, were opposed to doing anything about it.
None of this matters to the MSM because it doesn't fit their agenda.
I believe the Duelfer report confirms this statement of Clinton's.
"Concede"? Oh yeah, I forgot about the Demorat spin that the invasion was because we knew they had WMDs, instead of because we didn't know if they had WMDs.
The MSM is in full court press mode for their man, JFK.
"The media ignores all of this."
---- no sh*t??? :/
How utterly stupid. B&C just threw away the election.
They could have won in a landslide. So much for my previous predictions of 58 % p.v.
B.T.W., as some of you are observing, we STILL DO NOT REALLY KNOW that Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
I don't care what any of you says, Karl Rove is a complete and utter idiot.
Now I wonder why on earth they would do that?
John Kerry considered himself a war hero when he came back from Vietnam.
Once home he realized the climate had changed and so did he.
Kerry became a traitorous war protester
John Kerry was for the war in Iraq when he was first campaigning
John Kerry realized he could get more support going the Howard Dean anti-war route
What I want to know now, would Kerry do the same thing to the people serving now,that he did to the soldiers when he came home from Vietnam?
I have been thinking of this and the pattern is so striking
Go to the "last" here and work back:
IRAQ- some links to terror
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/746457/posts
Anyone who wants to use my brief "rebuttal" to the media spin on this Duelfer report as a letter to your local newspaper, please be my guest. You can send a letter to the editor via the email portal here: http://www.georgewbush.com/GetActive/WriteNewspapers.aspx
I'm still not convinced that there aren't Iraqui WMDs in Syria or buried in the desert, but even if there are none, why is this news now?
Well thats a nice ubiased report. NOT
What a bunch of fricken panty-headed idiot liberal morons. ABC has the interview Diane Sawyer did with that exceptionally UGLY woman in charge of Iraq's Bio/Chem Warfare program. Hussein had a couple of weeks to ship all the crap to Syria.
What happened to the pics of migs buried in the sand? The chemical warhead? Like so many other things they, accidently make the news and then the media hides it and lies about it.
Let's see: he didn't gas the Iranians; didn't gas the Kurds; and kicked inspectors out so they wouldn't find his top secret baby formula.
Only an idiot would think that.
BUMP
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