Here's an interesting report from CNN, dateline February 13, 1999: http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9902/13/afghan.binladen/ certainly an odd offer from a secular dictator with no contacts with al queda. Saddam Hussein offered asylum Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers. Despite repeated demands from Washington, the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden after the August 7 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, demanding proof of his involvement in terrorist activities. However, in recent weeks, both the United States and Britain have renewed their pressure on the Taliban to expel bin Laden. Pakistan, a strong ally of the Taliban and one of only three countries to recognize the movement's control over Afghanistan, also has been asked by the United States to use its influence to have bin Laden expelled from Afghanistan. "We have been asked, but we can't force the Taliban to do anything they don't want to do," Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz said last week. The Taliban did promise that bin Laden would not use Afghanistan as a staging arena for terrorist activities. Bin Laden came to Afghanistan from Sudan more than five years ago while the Taliban's opposition ruled the country.
Nor can you prove that senior decision makers within the administration saw every bit of intelligence. Ahhh, the plausibly incompetent card. You know in Corporate America if a marketing guy says the product will sell a million units and none sell, he gets his *ss handed to him as he gets FIRED.
From AngryBear: Cheney: 51 Lies is Not That Many Karl Rove sent us his chief attack dog tonight: Vice President Dick Cheney added his voice on Wednesday to the chorus of Republican criticism of Democrats who have accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence on Iraq, calling it "one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city." "Some of the most irresponsible comments have, of course, come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing force against Saddam Hussein," Cheney told the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, a conservative policy group. For Cheney to suggest we Democrats are being dishonest is a bit rich – especially given the fact that Henry Waxman has documented 51 times that Cheney misled the country about Iraq. link to pdf *** From the pdf: The Iraq on the Record database contains 237 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq that were made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice. These statements were made in 125 separate appearances, consisting of 40 speeches, 26 press conferences and briefings, 53 interviews, 4 written statements, and 2 congressional testimonies. Most of the statements in the database were misleading because they expressed certainty where none existed or failed to acknowledge the doubts of intelligence officials. Ten of the statements were simply false. Statements by President Bush. Between September 12, 2002, and July 17, 2003, President Bush made 55 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 27 separate public appearances. On October 7, 2002, three days before the congressional votes on the Iraqi war resolution, President Bush gave a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, with 11 misleading statements, the most by any of the five officials in a single appearance.
The specific instnaces I made regarding the man who claimed that Saddam was training Al Qaeda in chem and bio weapon use, were shared with the administration as was shown in the Washington Post report. They had access to all sorts of other qualifiers on the reliability of the information given. It states in the Post article that administration had the access to that. As far as using the word 'lie' I don't use it when referring to Bush claiming that he thought there were WMD's in Iraq. That isn't a lie, and he was just wrong, as I was, and a lot of other people. But in the specific instnaces such as the IAEA report and "coverup" then the word 'lie' is an accurate discription. In the case of Bush claiming the congressional vote was so that he could go and maintain the peace... The downing street memo shows that to be a lie as well. As for Bush claiming the Robb-Slibermann report exhonorates him on how he used the intel in the lead up to the war, that is also a lie. He is claiming something that isn't true. I do understand your point about intel analysis and cherry picking. That is a fair point. The reason why I say he mislead the nation is that there were certain cases when the intel the used, they knew at the time was unreliable, and used it anyway. It may have only been on a few pieces of intel, or it may have been more. But on certain pieces there can be know doubt that the administration knew it was unreliable.
Its interesting but there's no follow up in that story, no sources are mentioned (even anything like unamed sources or reliable sources), and apparently the offer wasn't accepted (if one was even made) These two lines don't seem to have much validity like the two lines in the Newsweek story on Qu'rans being flushed.
If we look at Iraqi War II as an IPO, and Bush as the CEO, it doesn't matter if he lied or "cherry-picked" (which is just euphemism for withholding material information) and the venture bombed (no pun intended) the way Iraqi War II has -- his ass would be in the Federal prison (and not the white collar resort kind). And if he did neither of those, his ass would still be FIRED (just like someone already said above) for such a miserable failure. It's great that we hold our presidents to lower standards than CEOs. But I suppose that's why it's politics and not business.
They were also stories of Saddam trying to work a 11 hour deal, but the Bushies refused to meet with his rep.
I don't care if a President lies. Honestly, I believe that it's part of the President's job to lie. My issue is: did he lie for the good of the country? Every day, the President of the US has to deal with sleazy, slimy people (both inside and outside our country). The really good Presidents will do all their sleazy, lying, weasely stuff for the benefit of the country (and the really slick ones will do all that stuff without the US public ever knowing about it). I don't care if Bush or Clinton, or whoever lies to the American people. I care about why they lie and whether their intentions are or are not for the benefit of the country.
I would like to address one more point to the crowd that believes that Bush made a mistake and didn't do any of it on purpose. If he made a mistake why would he not take steps to apologize to the people who got it right and try to work with them in the future? Instead he drove them out, trashed them to the media, and then on national television couldn't come up with a mistake he made, after being asked. He's treated people like they were the ones wrong. Meanwhile the likes of Wolfowitz, Gonzales, etc. have gotten promotions. Powell was alienated, Garner replaced etc. It just doesn't make sense for a person who made an honest mistake to act that way.
Actually, I think Bush underplayed the threat of Iraq. I'm sure many people know the truth - on 9/11, Saddam was actually piloting one of the planes (the one that hit the second tower), but leapt out with a parachute where he was picked up by Wonder Woman in her invisible jet, and Wonder Woman flew him back to Iraq. It shocks and saddens me that the liberals of this board would choose to focus on the alleged mistakes of the president rather than the obvious fact that Saddam Hussein hated everything about freedom except Wonder Woman, who is actually an Amazon.
material omissions, and willful blindness are enough to send people to jail, but apparently not enough for old basso, the johnny cochran of stupid advocacy.
It's a pretty long and damning article... The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq. Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so. According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said. Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm. "This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...0nov20,0,1753730.story?coll=la-home-headlines
a mc josh post... Tucked into that LA Times article about 'Curveball' is yet more evidence that we are still yet to have a serious and comprehensive investigation of the handling of WMD intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war. There are some many bits of evidence. But this one is worth noting. From the LAT (emphasis added) ... ----------------------- Curveball was the chief source of inaccurate prewar U.S. accusations that Baghdad had biological weapons, a commission appointed by Bush reported this year. The commission did not interview Curveball, who still insists his story was true, or the German officials who handled his case. The German account emerges as the White House is lashing out at domestic critics, particularly Senate Democrats, over allegations the administration manipulated intelligence to go to war. Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney called such claims reprehensible and pernicious. ... An investigation by The Times based on interviews since May with about 30 current and former intelligence officials in the U.S., Germany, England, Iraq and the United Nations, as well as other experts, shows that U.S. bungling in the Curveball case was worse than official reports have disclosed. The White House, for example, ignored evidence gathered by United Nations weapons inspectors shortly before the war that disproved Curveball's account. Bush and his aides issued increasingly dire warnings about Iraq's biological weapons before the war even though intelligence from Curveball had not changed in two years. --------------------- So the Silbermann-Robb Commission hasn't spoken to Curveball or the German intelligence officials who handled his case and provided the conduit of information to US intelligence agencies. Almost certainly, the Senate intel committee investigation hasn't either. But the LA Times has managed to speak with a slew of current and former intelligence officials who have provided information not included in those official reports. Now, gaining direct access to the sources of even an allied intelligence agency is quite dicey and frequently not possible. Even more so in a highly politicized investigative context as opposed to in the process of intelligence gathering and analysis. So there's no reason to fault these investigations for not getting a hold of Curveball himself; nor do I think there would have been any particular purpose served in doing so. But the Times article suggests that many people in the stream of information passing back and forth between German and US intelligence and the White House were not spoken to either. And those people provided information which puts the whole matter in a rather more sinister light -- not just botched intelligence work and analysis but deliberate distortions of what evidence we had before the war and refusals to come clean about highly relevant contradictory information. This speaks again to a point we and many others have made repeatedly: the highly circumscribed nature of these two investigations. The very structure and scope of these inquiries were designed to leave much of the story untold -- quite apart from the numerous intentionally misleading passages we've noted in the Senate intel report from last year. -- Josh Marshall
What Bush Knew: More Evidence That He Deliberately Misled Murray Waas, writing in the National Journal, breaks new information regarding the level of knowledge President Bush had prior to the Iraq war about the supposed Iraq/al Qaeda link: The information, which was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the “President’s Daily Brief,” corresponds with the accounts of two former White House counterterrorism advisers: According to the 9/11 Commission report, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Richard Clarke’s office sent a memo to the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, at the President’s direction, concluding that “only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda…Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein’s regime.” [9-11 Commission Report, p.334] This information did not prevent Bush and Cheney from presenting the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda as an undisputed fact. Despite the risk of being labeled “dishonest and reprehensible,” this appears to be strong evidence that Bush and Cheney misled us.
I agree. As we see time and time again they used "intelligence" that reliable sources told them was false, from liars and not to be trusted. I guess it depends on what you mean by lie. Not much difference. Who wants to be the last one to die for a lie in Iraq? In Congress, these paper warriors are not only not willing to risk themselves or their kids, but not even their poltical careers as they start bailing on the war. It is all over except the post morten of who to blame for the Iraqi fiasco, which will replace the "Vietnam Syndrome". I predict the warmongerers will claim that it could have been a splendid little war and victory if not for the hapless Dubya. Of course, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan and the liberal media of Judith Miller, Bob Woodward etc, will receive their share of blame. These warmongerers claim to be so patriotic yet they don't trust the American people to know when it is time to fight a war for their country. They believe that they have to lie and decieve to get us to fight necessary wars.
So when Clinton and Democrats used the data they were misled, but when Bush used the same information he lied? hmmmm.....
