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If anyone doubts the need to have ousted Saddam, a news release in the past few days should put such doubts to rest. The report is that the US has sold 550 tons of yellowcake uranium that had been found in Iraq to Cameco, a Canadian company. The uranium will now be used as fuel and poses no severe risk if properly stored and sealed. While the report contains no new information per se, it brings to the forefront pertinent facts that, while widely available, were also widely ignored. But when analyzing military and security matters, we can ill afford...

 Why Iraq Was Inevitable Arthur Herman July/August 2008 E-mail This Article to a Friend Subject: Why Iraq Was Inevitable Yes, I would like to receive periodic updates and information via e-mail from Commentary. Recipient Addresses: Separate each address with a comma. Your E-mail Address: Message: E-mail This Article to a Friend Thank You A link to "Why Iraq Was Inevitable" has been emailed to your friends. Most E-mailed articles: The Mind of Seymour HershWhy Iraq Was InevitableDictatorships & Double StandardsAre We Winning the War on Terror?Hugo Chávez's Jewish Problem According to an April 2008 poll in U.S. News &...

For years, the media and Democrats have sold the public an understanding that Gerorge W. Bush fabricated a story that Saddam Hussein had a WMD program in order to justify invading Iraq, which invasion then becomes "based on a lie." About 550 metric tons of yellowcake concentrated uranium were recently shipped out of Iraq. It had been part of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. That much was recently reported by the Associated Press . I wrote an article for American Thinker that commented on that story the day it appeared. That yellowcake stockpile pre-dated 1991, and had been under the UN's...

Hear about the 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq? No? Why should you? It doesn't fit the media's neat story line that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed no nuclear threat when we invaded in 2003.

WMD: Hear about the 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq? No? Why should you? It doesn't fit the media's neat story line that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed no nuclear threat when we invaded in 2003. It's a little known fact that, after invading Iraq in 2003, the U.S. found massive amounts of uranium yellowcake, the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel, at a facility in Tuwaitha outside of Baghdad. In recent weeks, the U.S. secretly has helped the Iraqi government ship it all to Canada, where it was bought by a Canadian...

WASHINGTON, July 7, 2008 – Defense personnel have completed the transfer of 550 metric tons of Iraqi uranium ore to Canada, Defense officials said here today. The Iraqi government asked the United States to help transfer the yellowcake -- as the ore is known -- from Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center near Baghdad to its buyer in Canada, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said today. The military dubbed the movement Operation McCall, and it ended July 5. DoD’s portion of the operation involved the transfer of the ore. Yellowcake is a uranium ore that can be processed to become nuclear fuel. State...

It was on page 6 of my daily newspaper that an important reminder of Saddam’s capacity for WMD was published: the movement in secrecy of 550 tons of ‘yellowcake’ uranium from Iraq to Canada on July 5. 550 tons! Can they really continue their lies about no possibility of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Saddam’s Iraq? I know they will try to spin this, but can any honest person now still maintain that Saddam was not able to reconstitute his nuclear weapons’ capability left to his own devices? Can any honest person continue the nonsense of “Bush lied”? Although U.N....

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's government has removed 550 tonnes of natural uranium left over from Saddam Hussein's era and sold it to a Canadian company, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. The uranium, called yellowcake, had been stored in a compound at Tuwaitha, south of Baghdad, which was once the centre of Saddam's nuclear weapons programme. A U.S. embassy spokeswoman confirmed the U.S. military helped safely ship the uranium out of the country. "The Iraqi government decided to get rid of the uranium, which amounted to 550 tonnes, because of its potentially harmful affects on Iraq and the region and because...

Got this off some blog a while back, but the person makes some interesting observations. His central point is that, since the forgeries were such obvious fakes, were they 'planted' specifically to be exposed as frauds? (i.e., not to actually convince anyone)... July 13, 2003Niger Uranium - Why the Forgeries During the lead-up to the Iraq war, documents surfaced which purported to show an attempt by Saddam to buy Niger uranium. These documents turned out to be forgeries. Nobody is asking: Why were these forgeries made and who made them?They certainly served a purpose: they cast serious doubt on any...

550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium worth millions of dollars were shipped out of Iraq to Canada. The uranium was transported in 37 military flights in 3,500 secure barrels. Though the yellowcake had been in Iraq for some time and had been discovered by the United Nations inspectors after the first Gulf War in during the Senior President Bush’s presidency the material has finally been removed. This is a fact the Democrats don’t want publicized and the MSM will oblige.

<p>The media have been telling us for years that Saddam had no WMD, so "Bush's War": was based on a "lie." And those who believed Saddam did have WMD or WMD programs were delusional or worse.</p> <p>And multiple devices that could be used in a nuclear weapon.</p>

Return to the Article July 06, 2008President Bush exonerated of 'misleading statements' leading to Iraq warVincent Gioia In 2003 newspaper columnist Robert Novak wrote his now infamous "Mission to Niger" (published on July 14, 2003) in which he mentioned an allegedly failed attempt by Saddam Hussein to purchase uranium reported by the husband of a (not so) secret CIA agent, Valerie Plame, and mentioned her by name. Mrs. Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, stated in a number of interviews and in subsequent writings (as listed in his 2004 memoir The Politics of Truth) that members of President...

For all those naysayers about Saddam not having WMDs, I just found this headline: "Report: Uranium Stockpile Removed From Iraq in Secret U.S. Mission." ***** Tell me what Saddam was going to do with 550 metric tons of yellowcake. He wasn't going to use it for lawn fertilizer.

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In this light—that is, in light of what was actually known at the time about Saddam Hussein’s actions and intentions, and in light of what was added to our knowledge through his post-capture interrogations by the FBI—the decision to go to war takes on a very different character. The story that emerges is of a choice not only carefully weighed and deliberately arrived at but, in the circumstances, the one moral choice that any American President could make. Had, moreover, Bush failed to act when he did, the consequences could have been truly disastrous. The next American President would surely...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Biological weapons are among the few capabilities Iraq has improved since being defeated by a U.S.-led coalition in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, government officials say. Working under the noses of U.N. inspectors from 1991 to 1998, President Saddam Hussein's government probably developed mobile germ warfare labs and processes to create dried bacteria for deadlier and longer-lasting weapons, U.S. officials and former weapons inspectors say. Pentagon officials say Iraq's biological arsenal could do the most damage, physical and psychological, if it were used to retaliate immediately against a U.S. invasion rather than in later stages of battle....

One of our readers (Vince1974) reminded us of this January 1999 ABC News special on the ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda posted last year on Powerline.**************************See the Blog for the Video......***********************************When a liberal claims there never was any evidence of a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda (like coordinating attacks in 2002 with AQ number 2 Ayman Zawahiri) don’t believe them. They simply are exposing a deadly ignorance. 3 Responses to “In 1999, Saddam Linked To Al Qaeda”

Yet AGAIN there’s another document showing that Saddam’s regime was not only willing to work with Al Queda groups, but in fact did so.  This time, it’s a 2002 memo from Saddam’s regime to Al Queda’s strategic planner (often described as the real brains of the terror group alliance).The “no ties” myth gets another shovel of dirt on its graveLINKHT Regimeofteror

Uncommon Knowledge Douglas Feith talks war policy. “Chapters 1-5”  FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008War Policy with Douglas Feith: Chapter 5 of 5Is the U.S. equipped to deal with national-security problems around the world? Feith says no, pointing out the antiquated organization of our entire security community as well as the ineffective mess that is the CIA. Of course, our national security ultimately depends on the people in charge. Feith rates a few of the bigger names. THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2008War Policy with Douglas Feith: Chapter 4 of 5Feith describes how WMD in Iraq — or the lack thereof — changed everything....

When an Institute for Defense Analysis study seemed to announce that there was “no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda,” the media was quick to parrot the line of Warren P. Strobel of McClatchy Newspapers. Relying on a leaked executive summary of the report, Strobel wrote that “an exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents” found “no evidence” linking Saddam Hussein with Al-Qaeda. Led by the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, the right side of the blogosphere was quick to point out that the report did contain evidence of such connections, focusing mainly on Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which merged with Al-Qaeda...

The Kurdish daily Kurdistani Nwe has published a 2002 letter from the Iraqi presidency that it says proves that there was cooperation between the regime of Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. The letter, which appeared on the paper's front page, was published by the intelligence apparatus of the Iraqi presidency and discussed an intention to meet with Ayman Al-Zawahiri in order to examine a plan drawn up by the Iraqi presidency to carry out a "revenge operation" in Saudi Arabia.

The SurrenderMedia recently misreported (there’s a surprise) that Saddam Hussein had no ties to al-Qaeda, when in fact the report the SurrenderMedia was trying to cover said just the opposite. As I noted at the time the analysis showed Saddam Hussein had long time ties with Ayman Zawahiri, who at the time ran the Egyptian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. A group that was integrated into al-Qaeda when Zawahiri joined forces with Bin Laden in the 1990’s. Gateway Pundit has a link to a recent news article out of Iraq showing evidence that Saddam Hussein continued his ties with Zawahiri after...

For almost five long years, many of us have tried to explain to a deaf media and public that President Bush was a victim of the world's intelligence when it came to the whole weapons of mass destruction thing with Iraq. Liberals chanted "Bush lied, people died" and some have called for The Hague to try him for war crimes. So, you can imagine my frustration and near uncontrollable anger when after all that, the Los Angeles Times decides to shock the world... Bush never lied to us about Iraq

James Kirchick, assistant editor of The New Republic, has come under NewsBusters scrutiny for his bias before, of course. Our job is, we all know, to document and analyze that bias. But while we naturally focus on when the media get it wrong, we should have the maturity to point out when those who we criticize get it right. Here is a case when a member of the media that we usually criticize did, indeed, get it right and this time it might get him in Dutch with his lefty pals in the nutroots. After all, the surest way to...

Touring Vietnam in 1965, Michigan Gov. George Romney proclaimed American involvement there "morally right and necessary." Two years later, however, Romney -- then seeking the Republican presidential nomination -- not only recanted his support for the war but claimed that he had been hoodwinked. "When I came back from Vietnam, I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get," Romney told a Detroit TV reporter who asked the candidate how he reconciled his shifting views. Romney (father of Mitt) had visited Vietnam with nine other governors, all of whom denied that they had been duped by their government....

Have you seen this delicious little quote from Pennsylvania Democrat Congressman Paul Jankorski? Why it would seem that Mr. Jankorski is admitting that the Democrats lied about what was going on in Iraq during the 2006 mid-term elections? Here's his quote: "I'll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we ... the Democrats ... that if we won the Congressional elections we could stop the war. Now anybody who was a good student of government would know that wasn't true. "But you know ... the temptation to want to win back the Congress ......

Democrats and two useful Republican idiots on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) have colluded in a disgraceful sham, published late last week as a report on “whether public statements regarding Iraq by U.S. government officials were substantiated by intelligence information” prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. All one really needs to know about this exercise in legerdemain is revealed by SSCI Chairman Jay Rockefeller’s diktat — over Republican protest and adopted without a vote — that the Committee would focus myopically on prewar statements made by administration officials. That is, the SSCI opted to overlook the...

The recent "report" from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has a number of conclusions and amendments. Often, when these reports are released, many people don't have the time or tenacity to read the entire report. Instead, they literally jump to the conclusions and argue their political talking points from there. I've taken the time to go through this latest "report," cut out the conclusions, and added any amendments to those conclusions whenever possible. Readers are encouraged to read the actual report (particularly the "Additional Views" and "Amendments" sections). It appears that there are at least 150 examples in this...

Last week the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the final findings of their four year investigation into pre-war intelligence on Saddam's Iraq. The report was amazing. In direct contradiction, on the very first page of the report, Democrats controlling the committee chose to seize the opportunity to target the Bush Administration and cover up any and all accountability for anyone else (particularly themselves) regarding pre-invasion statements about how threatening Saddam's regime was to the United States. Previous reports have been bi-partisan and even unanimously supported by the committee. This one was not. This time, the Republican minority used their...

The Senate Intelligence Committee finally released it's long-awaited/overdue report on their investigation into pre-war intelligence on Saddam's Iraq. This final report was supposed to look at statements made by government officials in the run up to war from 1991-2003. It was supposed to examine the pre-war marketing or threat assessment and descriptions to the public about the intelligence regarding the threat posed by Saddam's regime. Instead, the report looked at just 5 Bush Administration speeches. It completely left out any and all comments from Pres Bush Sr, Pres Clinton, anyone in his administration, and every member of the House and...

Jay Rockefeller's Amnesia And the White House's weakness. by Stephen F. Hayes JAY ROCKEFELLER, CHAIRMAN of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released (yet another) report written by Democratic staffers claiming the Bush administration politicized intelligence. The "report" is a political document that is already accomplishing its goal: making headlines. I'll leave it to someone more industrious to correct the numerous errors in the report and in the news stories about it. (Maybe the White House? Nah.) "In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even non-existent," Rockefeller said at a...

Hours after Senator Clinton dropped out of the race, and the news cycle was swamped with never-ending coverage of the inevitable doing the inevitable something was released under the radar. linkBack in 2004 the Senate Intelligence Committee began an investigation into pre-war intelligence regarding Saddam's regime, the threat it posed, and how the intelligence was handled. Democrats on the committee did their best to politicize the investigation and give it the appearance of a precursor to impeachment of President Bush under some sort of Bush Lied conspiracy theory. They did this for purely political purposes despite being contrary to national...

Much has been made for the past six years of President Bush and his administration's efforts to convince the American people and the world of the necessity to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. It is an issue that has left few stones unturned, and as such, the time has come for history to examine the role that President Clinton and officials from his administration and the era of his reign had in marketing the idea that Saddam Hussein was a WMD threat. The rhetorical buildup to the invasion of Iraq started with the inclusion of Iraq in the famous...

The Party of Defeat's Top Five Lies About Iraq   By Ben JohnsonFrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, June 10, 2008 FROM THE BEGINNING, THE WAR HAS BEEN BASED ON LIES, DECEPTION, AND PROPAGANDA: the war against President Bush, that is. Beginning five years ago next month, the Party of Defeat's attempts to discredit the commander-in-chief in the midst of a war have continued without quarter, undeterred by factual refutation, rational discourse, measurable progress in Iraq, or palpable damage to the morale of American soldiers in a very hostile part of the world. The Left's campaign against the very war many of...

THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE has once again released a report claiming that the Bush administration hyped prewar intelligence. The so-called Phase Two report is supposed to investigate the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence. In reality, the report is little more than yet another attempt by partisan Democrats to make political hay out of flawed prewar intelligence. (The only Republicans to endorse the report were two of the Senate's most liberal GOP members.) The committee focused exclusively on prewar statements by Bush administration officials, ignoring similar statements by leading Democrats. Therefore, the report is intended to portray the Bush administration...

"Our evidence suggests that Baghdad is strengthening a relationship with al-Qaeda that dates back to the mid-1990s, when senior Iraqi intelligence officers established contact with the network in several countries." "We have some evidence that Iraqi Intelligence has been in contact with elements in the northeastern area. And the al-Qaeda operatives there are in regular contact with other operatives located in Baghdad. The Iraqi government has also received information from other sources alerting it to the presence of al-Qaeda operatives in Baghdad.""We have hard evidence that al-Qaeda is operating in several locations in Iraq with the knowledge and acquiescence of...

MEDIA ADVISORY, April 25 /Christian Newswire/ -- The trial of Scooter Libbey proved one thing: Bush and Cheney were right -- along with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, John Kerry, and every other Democrat and responsible world leader. Saddam Hussein WAS indeed actively working to develop and build a nuclear bomb, and posed a threat of a nuclear holocaust against American famlies. An internal memo from the U.S. State Department was declassified at the insistence of Scooter Libbey's defense attorneys (against Foggy Bottom's wishes). The memo has been posted by the ASSOCIATED PRESS at -- http://wid.ap.org/documents/libbytrial/jan23/DX71.pdf And the memo is fully...

A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said. The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator. Iran, which was a mortal...

Search the Internet for "Bush Lied" products, and you will find sites that offer more than a thousand designs. The basic "Bush Lied, People Died" bumper sticker is only the beginning. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among millions of Americans. And in releasing a committee report Thursday, he claimed to have accomplished his mission, though he did not use the L-word. "In making the case for war, the administration...

Yes, that's right boys and girls. The report that many politco-geeks have been waiting YEARS to read, has finally been released; the Senate Intelligence Committee's Investigative Report on Pre-War Intelligence About Saddam's Iraq. We've waited FIVE YEARS for clear evidence that Bush lied, and what do we get....(insert Price Is Right style drum roll here): A report that is purely political and partisanand a report that has nothing to do with Iraq, but looks at Bush Administration officials who had "talks" w Iran before the war, but failed to go through CIA and State Dept channels. Several things strike me...

WASHINGTON - A new Senate report gives a fresh shot of adrenaline to the election-year debate over the Iraq war. President Bush and his top officials deliberately misrepresented secret intelligence to make the case to invade Iraq, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The panel put a new spin on old charges, comparing claims made in five speeches by top Bush administration officials with intelligence reports. The committee says officials wrongly linked Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks and al-Qaida; claimed Iraq would give terrorist groups chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and said Iraq was developing drone aircraft to...

WASHINGTON — A long-delayed Senate report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans has concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda. The report was released Thursday after years of partisan squabbling, and it marks the close of five years of investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee into the use, abuse and faulty assessments of intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. That some Bush administration claims about...

President George W. Bush and his top policymakers misstated Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism and ignored doubts among intelligence agencies about Iraq's arms programs as they made a case for war, the Senate intelligence committee reported on Thursday. The report shows an administration that "led the nation to war on false premises," said the committee's Democratic Chairman, Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia. Several Republicans on the committee protested its findings as a "partisan exercise." The committee studied major speeches by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials in advance of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003,...

US Defense Department officials in late 2001 and 2002 concealed from the CIA and other intelligence agencies potentially useful information gleaned from Iranian agents, said a Senate report released Thursday. The Iranians told Pentagon employees about a tunnel complex in Iran used to store weapons and move its personnel covertly out of the country, likely into Afghanistan in the post September 11 war period, according to the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Iranians also told of a long-standing relationship with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the growth of anti-regime sentiment inside Iran, it said. The new report adds...

I have worked in or with every Congress since 1970 and it is now clear that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi continue to preside over the worst Congress in living memory. This is particularly true in the most serious area a legislator must tackle: national security. No intelligence bill has been passed, now for the second straight year. The FISA reform bill, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, continues to be bottled up. And the prospect of a Defense Authorization bill becoming law is also bleak. On the most important duty they are sworn to do -- provide for the common...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration misused intelligence to build a case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a report issued Thursday. The White House exploited its ability to declassify intelligence selectively to bolster its case for war, the committee chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, D-West Virginia, said in the report. Senior officials disclosed and discussed sensitive intelligence reports that supported the administration's policy objectives and kept out of public discourse information that did not, he said. The report also found that the administration misled the American people about contacts between...

Nor is there anything unprecedented, or particularly dishonest, about the way the rationale for the war shifted when the hunt for weapons of mass destruction had run aground. True, the goal of a democratic Iraq – and the broader agenda of the war as a spearhead of "reform" in Arab and Muslim lands – emerged a year or so after the onset of the war. But the aims of practically every war always shift with the course of combat, and with historical circumstances. Need we recall that the abolition of slavery had not been an "original" war aim, and that...

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Tuesday he was disappointed in "flawed intelligence" before the Iraq war and was concerned that if a Democrat wins the presidency in November and withdrew troops prematurely it could "eventually lead to another attack on the United States. In an interview with Politico magazine and Yahoo News, Bush also said he gave up golf in 2003 out of respect for U.S. soldiers killed in the war, which has now lasted more than five years. "I didn't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," he said....

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had extensive ties to terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, according to an official report published by the Pentagon’s Institute for Defense Analyses and released through the Joint Forces Command. That report, Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, came up with some startling revelations in its 59 pages:

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH IRAQ WMD SLEUTH DAVID KAYDavid Kay was charged by the Bush administration with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the invasion. Instead of finding weapons, though, he found what he told SPIEGEL was 'the biggest intelligence fiasco of my lifetime.' SPIEGEL: As head of the Iraq Survey Group, you led the effort to follow up on the claims made by 'Curveball,' the asylum seeker from Iraq who told German intelligence that Saddam Hussein was building mobile biological weapons laboratories. Do you remember the first time you began to doubt his story? Kay: The real shock...