Lynn Woolsey calls for Repeal of Iraq War

Today on Dailykos Rep. Lynn Woolsey has called for the Repeal of H.R. 141 - the Iraq War Resolution.

Six weeks after we invaded Iraq, President Bush stood aboard an aircraft carrier before a banner that read "Mission Accomplished," declaring that "major combat operations in Iraq are over." From that moment on, we were no longer fighting a war, but rather participating in an occupation.

An occupation cannot be won. The President has put our troops in a position they should not have gotten into in the first place.

Our troops were not prepared to occupy Iraq. They weren't given the proper equipment, nor were they properly trained. And most importantly, the US Congress never authorized this President to undertake an occupation.

This occupation of Iraq must end, now, and President Bush must bring our troops home.

Under our Constitution the Power to Declare War rests exclusively with the Congress, yet with this resolution the Congress actually delegated their authority to the President to make the determination on whether we would go to War or not.

Sec 3. (b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION.
In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon there after as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, and
(2) acting pursuant to this resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

We now know unequivically that Iraq had already complied fully with all relevant UN resolution as was made clear by the Dulfer Report, claims of ignorance by the Bush Administration are hard to fathom when Saddam Hussein provided the US and UN with a full and complete disclosure of the status of thier WMD programs five months before the war.

We now know that all claims of links between Saddam and 9-11 were false and the work of fabricator who provided this information most likely to put an end to being tortured in Gitmo.

This Resolution clearly required the President to ensure that all Diplomatic means of disarming Saddam were employed before we invaded. He failed at this.

Rep. Woolsey is absolutely correct that a lengthy occupation of Iraq was never authorized by Congress. We have completely botched the job of training the Iraqi Military so far, but it's high time that we put some fire under their feet to get their shit together, not simply to save our own skins -- but because it's the best thing for the Iraqi people to take control and responsibility for thier own country.

What's that old conservative adage about giving a man a fish and him eating for a day - and teaching a man to fish and he eats everyday?

It's long past time we turned over the fishing pole. Back to Woolsey:

That is why, today, I am introducing the Iraq War Powers Repeal Act of 2006. It is past time for Congress to demand that the Bush Administration come clean on Iraq, and put the safety of our troops, and the security of our nation first.

By repealing the Iraq War Powers, Congress would resume its Constitutional role overseeing the use of military force, and would reassert its authority by bringing our troops home.

Of course, the passage of this bill will be an up-hill struggle, but it is a fight that we can no longer avoid. Rescinding the President's war powers in Iraq is the least that we can do for our troops, and for their families who anxiously await their return. With over 2,550 brave men and women having given their lives, and thousands seriously wounded, how many more must die before we put an end to this madness?

With over 100 Iraqis dying each day -- how many indeed?

Vyan

Running Iraq just like Saddam

In recent days Bill O'Reilly has been again named "Worse Person in the World" by his best gadfly/nemesis Keith Olberman for suggesting that America should "run Iraq the way that Saddam did" in order to bring order to the chaos in the region.

On the same night as Olbermann's rebuke O'Lielly continued his diatribe going on to argue that American is losing the war because of the ACLU, Amnesty International, The International Red Cross, President Jimmy Carter and Air America Radio who have all heavily critized the U.S. for violating Geneva Conventions and committing possible War Crimes.

Although it's easy to blow-off these comments by O'Reilly, I think his statements betray a mentality that has been at work all along - and ultimately knocks down the final piece of the "Noble Mission" canard.

We didn't go to Iraq to suppress WMD's - Saddam didn't have them and we knew it - and we didn't go to spread "democracy", not if we have to implement totalitarianism in order to do it.

We went there to project American Power, in an infantile display of dicks-man-ship - just as O'Reilly and his "Get Tough" rhetoric reveals.

Here's how O'Reilly laid it out.

O'REILLY: "Talking Points" believes the Bush administration has to stop being defensive about waging war. At this point, the new Iraqi government should declare martial law in areas controlled by insurgents. That means anyone can be arrested and shoot-on-sight curfews.

Saddam was able to control Iraq, as you know, and defeat insurgencies against him. The new Iraqi government can do the same, but it needs to get much tougher.

Let's examine for a moment how Saddam was able to defeat those insurgencies shall we? Following the first Gulf War, with his own forces essentially decimated by the air-barrage of U.S. B-52s, Saddam surrendered to U.S. led coalition forces - there was both a Shi'ite rebellion in southern Iraq and a Kurdish rebellion in the North against Saddam. His response to these insurrections was swift and brutal.

He used nerve toxin on them. Y'know - Weapons of Mass Destruction.

O'Reilly is far from alone is his view that America needs to take off the "Kid Gloves". Micheal Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden desk has long argued for a Total War strategy against Islamic extremism.

I've found Scheuer's writing most useful for it's detailed insights into Bin Laden and Al Qaeda's over-arching strategy of prompting an American financial collapse - like that with brought the Soviet Union to an end following years of endless, fruitless battle in Afghanistan - rather than a strict military defeat. He also suggests that our best choices are to change our policies toward the Muslim world and attempt to reach-out and prove we aren't the enemy of Islam that they seem to think we are.

This makes sense, but Scheuer is a pragmatist and he realizes that this type of radical shift in strategy is highly unlikely, therefore he points out what just might be the inevitable. In his book "Imperial Hubris" he makes the following arguement.

Killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field, fertilizer plants and grain mills-- all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy it's support base. Land mines, moreover, will be massively reintroduced to seal borders and mountain passes too long, high, or numerous to close with U.S. soldiers. As noted such ations will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows. Again, this sort of bloody mindednes is neither admirable nor desirable, but it will remain America's only option so long as she stands by her failed policies toward the Muslim world.

Scheuer supports the doctrine of Total War and essentially idolizes Sherman, who burned an enourmous swath through the south in order to break the back of the Rebellion during our own Civil War. Tactics not unlike those used by Saddam Hussein. He argues that our efforts in Afghanistan have been "dainty" and largely ineffective -- the bulk of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces were able to easily avoid being captured or killed and have since spread worldwide, metastesizing (sp) into a Cancer that now affects Chechnya, Malaysia and has prompted the bombings of Schools, Planes (Russia), Trains (Madrid) and Subways (London).

He's not exactly a Bush fan, and is fervent against the Iraq war. But neither was a he a fan of Clinton. His biggest error in my opinion is his failure to recognize our success in Bosnia by using an overwhelmingly powerful force comprised of equal parts American, European and Russian forces against the massive confusion, chaos, ethnic cleansing of the Balkans. As well as our success against the attempted disruption and insurgency by Al Qaeda (which as documented by Richard Clarke in his book "Against All Enemies" was anticipated and thwarted).

O'Reilly and Scheuer are far from alone in their way of thinking.

O'REILLY: All right, Colonel Hunt, I think we're at a tipping point here in the Iraq war. I think if America does not stop being on the defensive, and I mean militarily and in the war of public opinion, that we gotta get out of there. We either have to fight the war and win the war, or get the hell out.

HUNT: Yeah, I totally agree. We take the gloves off. Military leaders, take the gloves off. The soldiers know what they do. Get out of the way. Politicians, get out of the way.

But of course, like all True-Blue and RED Conservatives, O'Reilly can't help but find Liberals to Blame for our sad state of affairs in Iraq.

The Bush administration also needs to begin challenging those who are helping the enemy. The ACLU, for example, opposes just about every anti-terror strategy. This organization should be exposed.

The BBC also helps the enemy by consistently slanting the Iraq war coverage and portraying the coalition as villains. The vile Air America Radio network does the same thing.

O'REILLY: All right, do you believe it's a tipping point, general?

McINERNEY: Yes, I do, Bill. And it's a tipping point in the will of the American people. We can't lose over there militarily. It's the will of the American people. And I call them "ACE" Democrats or "ACE" liberals -- aid and comforting the enemy.

O'Leilly also made the arguement that the ACLU and President Carter have hurt America by proclaiming that we torture detainees, even though America official policy is against torture. Well, sure the official policy says one thing - but apparently the Army Field Manual now says something completely different.

The problem with all of this is the very strong probability that America took the "gloves" off a long time ago. We already run Iraq just like Saddam did.

The 2004 attack on Fallujah which preceeded the first Iraqi election follows almost exactly the script that both Scheuer and O'reilly describe -- establish Marshall Law, completely disrupt the infrastrucure and oh yeah - use Chemical Weapons. (In this case, White Phosphorous, which literally melts skin).

The recent tragedy in Haditha also seems to support the contention that U.S. Forces are far from "holding back" in Iraq.

This entire line of reasoning ignores one crucial fact. We Don't Have A Large Enough Troop Footprint To Implement this kind of Strategey.

We don't have the manpower to implement Marshall Law and a "shoot on sight" curfew in Ramadi and also keep the insurgents from gaining a foothold elsewhere. The sad lessons of Fallajah and Afghanistan are that you have to cover every possible escape before you try and spring a trap. Besides that, we already have destroyed their infrastructure - and we haven't fixed it since.

As Sheuer points out the only reason America has to consider implementing overwhelming brutality and excise the Geneva Conventions fron the Army Field Manual - is because we've been dealing from a position of Bad Faith during this entire conflict. All of our justifications have been wrong. Saddam wasn't a threat to us, he didn't have WMD's, he didn't have Nukes, he wasn't tied to Al Qaeda - and he'd destroyed his WMD's in 1991 (as revealed by the Dulfer Report).

While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible Indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad's desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered.

This information was provided to the Bush Administration long before the invasion by Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, and confirmed by Saddam's pre-war declaration.

If our sole reasons for getting rid of Saddam was to end the "Rape Rooms" and then our people turn around and re-use the exact same facilities for the exact same purpose - what have we managed to accomplish other than changing the guards on the doorway to hell?

Our Administration Lied about the reasons for the War from Day One.

They used Bad Faith. The only true use of military force is bring someone to the negotiating table who is otherwise unwilling, but if they simply can't trust anything you say -- we should they bother showing up no matter how much force you use? Bad Faith poisons all the waters.

I've often begun to wonder, why did Saddam hide the fact that he had destroyed his WMD stockpile? Could it have been the strong likelyhood of a renewed Kurdish and Shi'ite rebellion if they knew his primary weapon against them was disabled? Was he just buying time to reconstitute his decimated Army? And if we had Let the Inspectors Finish Their Job and reveal that Saddam was disarmed, would his worst fears have come true and the violent insurgency that is now killing our soldiers would instead have gone and captured Saddam instead? (Especially since there some indications that Kurdish forces were the ones to capture Saddam, not U.S.)

The New York Times, Amnesty International, President Carter, the ACLU and Air America Radio didn't create this situation. Bush and his neo-con supporters did.

Being willing to Use the Big Stick doesn't end the story, you have to know how to clean up the mess after you use it.

We have to change direction as both John Murtha, John Kerry and Russ Feingold have pointed out - but it's fairly unlikely that this will occuring during the Bush Administration and we can expect nothing more than further Abu Ghraib's and Haditha's for the forseeable future.

Vyan

Dkos: Liar in Chief

The New York Times is finally covering Downing Street II, and georgia10 has the scoop.

The new Downing Street Memo isn't so new. Like previous documents, such as the original Downing Street Memo that stated flat out the evidence for war was being fixed around the policy of regime change, this document has been around in the foreign press and the blogosphere for a while. (See dkos diary on it here,). Nearly two months have passed since the newest memo came to public light. Its contents reiterate what dozens of official documents before it proved: Bush and Blair were hellbent on launching a war which they knew was in violation of international law. They were determined to lie and deceive the world into thinking Saddam Hussein possessed WMD, that he was an imminent threat. Prior to the meeting described in the document (which took place January 2003) the RAF and US military already were implementing a plan to provoke Saddam, doubling the rates of aerial bombings in Iraq during 2002 in an attempt to make Saddam respond. Apparently, this wasn't working fast enough. As this new document details, Bush and Blair decided to step up the provocation. They debated painting an American plane with U.N. colors to goad Saddam into firing it down. They talked of assassination. They conspired to manipulate evidence, to lie in their public statements to their people, to commit a war of aggression in violation of the public trust and the laws of the war.

This document confirms what a hundreds of previous pieces of evidence confirm: the President is a liar. When he told us on March 6, 2003 that "I've not made up our mind about military action," he lied. When he told us two days before Shock & Awe "no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," he lied. When he told us that Saddam "abosolutely" had a banned weapons program, he lied. Whenever George W. Bush opened his mouth to talk about Iraq from Sept. 11, 2001 on, he lied. He lied and he lies to this very day.

In respose to a kosser who stated "The majority of Americans are on the side of impeachment if it can be proved if Bush lied us into Iraq." I responded.

It's already been proven.

The Iraq Force Resolution required the President to use all diplomatic means prior to going to War - he simply didn't do that. The inspectors were still on the ground telling us that our Intel on WMD's was Garbage, Saddam had already given us a declaration that said he had no WMD's, which the Dulfer report has proved he told us the truth - and we're still in Iraq Three Years Later?

The simply obvious truth that Bush has Lied us into a War can not be denied, and this new Downing Street Memo simply re-iterates that point.

People like O'Reilly like to claim that we should "ignore past mistakes", although those mistakes continue to pill up like dead fish on our beaches. He claims Bush deserves an "Apology" because Saddam kept the fact he had no WMD's left a secret even from his top generals, while ignoring the fact that he didn't keep it a secret from us - and we still went to War.

People like Coulter like to claim that we did it to end "the rape rooms", when no such humanitarian goals were listed in the Iraq Force Resolution and since we've taken over Iraq, our own military have used the exact same torture chambers that Saddam used for our own purposes.

The White House knew that their anti-terroprism strategy could lead to War Crimes Violations, and they went ahead and implemented it anyway.

Remove and Convict. Impeachment's too good for 'em!

Vyan

Bushco still banking on the Big Lie

In his dustup with Helen Thomas the other day, President Bush besides ignoring the obvious facts that his biographer has shown [That he did intend to invade Iraq long before he was even President, and that once sworn in spent his very first NSC briefing talking exclusively about Saddam - while ignoring Al Qaeda ] Bush yet again continued to perpetrate the Biggest Lie of his Administration.

Bush claims that Saddam Hussein failed to "disarm and disclose" in accordance with UN Resolution 1441.

Now, we all certainly know there were no WMD's in Iraq when we invaded -- but we seem to have completely forgotten that Hussein told us there were no WMD's three months before the War, and BushCo completely ignored him.

Transcript of the exchange with Helen on March 21, 2006

Q I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet -- your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth -- what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil -- quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?

THE PRESIDENT: I think your premise -- in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- is that -- I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect --

Q Everything --

THE PRESIDENT: Hold on for a second, please.

Q -- everything I've heard --

THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, excuse me. No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true.

Ok, let's have a short reality break here...

Mickey Herskowitz who had struck a deal to ghost write Bush's autobiography said that...

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency....

And we all know this claim was merely an echo of the 1998 PNAC letter to Bill Clinton on Iraq.

Bush v Helen continues...

My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We -- when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life. And I'm never going to forget it. And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.

So his attitude changed on September 11th, did it? Then why did Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill state that from the very first meeting of the Bush's national Security Council in January 2001 he had Iraq on the brain.

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," says O'Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

"From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime," says Suskind. "Day one, these things were laid and sealed."

As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.

"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying `Go find me a way to do this,'" says O'Neill. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap."

Back to the Bushwacker...

Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that's why I went into Iraq -- hold on for a second --

Q They didn't do anything to you, or to our country.

THE PRESIDENT: Look -- excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where al Qaeda trained --

Q I'm talking about Iraq --

THE PRESIDENT: Helen, excuse me. That's where -- Afghanistan provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where they trained. That's where they plotted. That's where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.

Ok, I think most of us agree that chasing down al Qaeda in Afghanistan was a reasonable choice. It's too bad Bush botched the job, let most of al Qaeda escape across the borders and let Bin Laden out of Tora Bora - but it was at least a step in the right directly. It's immediately after that, that things went off the rails.

I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council; that's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences --

Q -- go to war --

THE PRESIDENT: -- and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.

Ok, this right here is the money quote. Most people have noted what I mentioned previously about PNAC, Herskowitz and O'Neill but this is the crucial LIE right here and it has two parts.

1) Saddam did not deny the inspectors.

From the White House Press Briefing of November 26th, 2002.

QUESTION: Ari, can I go back to the U.N. weapons inspectors? Tomorrow they're going to be actually doing the first of their inspections. Is there any message to the inspectors? Is there any message to the Iraqis?

MR. FLEISCHER: The President's message to both the inspectors and the Iraqis is that the Iraqis need to disarm for the sake of peace. And the President is pleased that the United Nations has passed a strong resolution that will allow the inspectors to have more tools to do their jobs to verify that Saddam Hussein has disarmed. Iraq has until December 8th to list the weapons of mass destruction for the United Nations Security Council resolution, and after December 8th that will begin a process where we will find out whether the Iraqis told the truth or not. So they have this date that is approaching. After that date a process begins. And the President wants to make certain that process leads to two things -- one, the truth, and the truth must lead to disarmament.

2) Saddam did fully disclose!

On December 7th, one day ahead of schedule, Iraq provided a full and complete declaration - as required by UN Resoution 1441 - on the status of their WMD Stockpiles and capabilites. The 12,000 page reported stated that their stockpiles were either depleted or destroyed and their programs for replenishing them were null and void.

The President stated that the U.S. would "take some time" to review the declaration...

Iraq is now required by the United Nations to provide a full and accurate declaration of its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs. We will judge the declaration's honesty and completeness only after we have thoroughly examined it, and that will take some time. The declaration must be credible and accurate and complete, or the Iraqi dictator will have demonstrated to the world once again that he has chosen not to change his behavior.

At this point I also want to mention a another peice of hay that Bill O'Reilly has been pounding on. Namely a March 12th New York Times Report that three months before the invasion Saddam revealed to his Generals that they had no more WMD's. O'Reily has claimed that since Saddam's own generals didn't know - how could we expect the President to know, and those who've accused him of being a "Liar", including former President Jimmy Carter, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, and Democratic Sens. Harry Reid (NV), Richard J. Durbin (IL), John Kerry (MA), Edward Kennedy (MA), Patrick Leahy (VT) and also entertainers like Will Smith, Chevy Chase, Johnny Depp, Ron Reagan Jr., Mike Farrell, and Barbra Streisand - should all apologize.

Media Matters does a good job of shooting this bogus canard down, by pointing that out even without the NYT article, many of Bush's claims and statments just don't hold water - but there's more.

The real problem with O'Reilly's argument is that through their December 7th Declaration Iraq told us exactly the same thing that he told his Generals ; they had no more WMD's. The Bush Administration just didn't listen.

Here's what then NSA Director Condoleeza Rice said about the Declaration on January 23rd.

And instead of full cooperation and transparency, Iraq has filed a false declaration to the United Nations that amounts to a 12,200-page lie.

For example, the declaration fails to account for or explain Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad, its manufacture of specific fuel for ballistic missiles it claims not to have, and the gaps previously identified by the United Nations in Iraq's accounting for more than two tons of the raw materials needed to produce thousands of gallons of anthrax and other biological weapons.

Basically they used one lie, about the Niger Uranium, to call Saddam a liar? Jesus Jiminy Christmas.

Here's more from Bush's 2003 State of the Union.


The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax -- enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin -- enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hadn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He's not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them -- despite Iraq's recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq [Might one of these be Curveball?], in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

But then we didn't really even need Saddam's declaration for proof, back in 1995 a defecting Iraqi General by the name of Hussein Kamel had claimed to have personally given the order to destroy Saddam's WMD stockpiles following the first Gulf War.

When the inspectors arrived they stated that they weren't finding any weapons or evidence of a Nuclear program, some even going so far as to say that the U.S. provided intelligence was "garbage". After four months of searching in February of 2003 the UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors had found absolutely nothing - no mobile biological labs - zip. Just a set of al samoud missles which were outside the guidelines of 1441, which they destroyed, but no actually WMD.

So we have a declaration from Iraq that they have to WMD's, we have inspectors on the ground who say - "They have no WMD's", we have a defector who says "We destroyed the WMD's" and what does Bush do?

He ignores it and claims that "Iraqi operatives continue to play a shell game with inspectors, moving suspected prohibited materials to different locations every 12 to 24 hours".

Then on March 17th, he orders the invasion.

All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end. Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing. For their own safety, all foreign nationals -- including journalists and inspectors -- should leave Iraq immediately.

Ok, so the inspectors were still in Iraq until March 17th were they? That's interesting since so many of Bush's supporters like to claim that Saddam pushed out the inspectors. No, Bush made the decision. He set the timetable, the interrupted the inspection process which as we now know would have eventually confirmed the Iraqi Declaration just as the Dulfer Report eventually revealed.

Chemical Weapons: While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad's desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered.

Biological Weapons: In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced BW weapons quickly. ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes. Indeed, from the mid-1990s, despite evidence of continuing interest in nuclear and chemical weapons, there appears to be a complete absence of discussion or even interest in BW at the Presidential level.

Nuclear: Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.

The fact is that the Iraqi Declaration - was absoluately correct. They had no WMD's and they told us so months before the War.

Bush supporters, the few that are left such as O'Reilly, Hannity and Gingrich, like to claim that "these mistakes are in the past"... but the truth is that these failures are the results of hubris and poor judgement. The facts were rigth in front of them, but they preferred to believe forged documents from Niger and Curveball instead.

These are the same types of mistakes we continue to see from this administration over and over again, from Katrina to Dubai. Ignoring mine safety, and muzzling Scientists while pushing forward the Intelligence Design agenda. These lies continue to poison the well of Democracy in Iraq with endless Bad Faith from this President and this Administration - leading it increasingly into a a Civil War which will continue to cost Iraqi and American lives and drain the U.S. Treasury.

And the lies just keep coming...

Vyan

Cheney/Libby : Timeline to Treason

Crossposted on Dailykos.

Scotter Libby's recent anouncement that he was given authority by the Vice-President to release classified information has created an avalanche of information in the last few days.

During his interview yesterday Vice-President Cheney has essentially confirmed that he was granted the authority to declassify information via Executive Order. What truly interesting is the timing of all this.

On March 2,2003 Joseph Wilson was interviewed by CNN. and criticized the Bush Administration.

WILSON: The problem is, it seems to me, is this is not a disarmament exercise any longer. The president made it very clear in his speech at the American Enterprise Institute and his comments at the White House that this is a regime-change activity. This is a war to go in, invade, conquer and occupy Iraq, and it doesn't make any difference what Saddam Hussein does.

...

WILSON: Well, the underlying objective, as I see it, the more I look at this, is less and less disarmament, and it really has little to do with terrorism, because everybody knows that a war to invade and conquer and occupy Iraq is going to spawn a new generation of terrorists.

So you look at what's underpinning this, and you go back and you take a look at who's been influencing the process. And it's been those who really believe that our objective must be far grander, and that is to redraw the political map of the Middle East...

...

The question is, can you really bring democracy at the point of a bayonet or at the point of a gun? And is it really America's military's responsibility to go in and occupy a country for 10 years, in the hopes that you're going to create a democracy, which probably will not be any more pro-American than what you've got in the region?

This interview apparently also featured David Albright who argument that the inspectors needed more time angered the Vice-President so much that the very next day he visited the CIA with NSA director Stephen Hadley to "dig up information on Albright".

Wilson went on CNN a second time on March 8, where he discussed assertions made by Dr. El Baradea of the IAEA that claims made by Colin Powell about Iraq's WMD and Nuclear capability were faked.

WILSON: Well, you know what it's like when you go into court. A prosecutor comes up with some evidence that is obviously false, it casts doubt on every other bit of evidence that he produces. And I think it's safe to say that the U.S. government should have or did know that this report was a fake before Dr. ElBaradei mentioned it in his report at the U.N. yesterday.

According to Jason Leopold these comments brought a strong reaction from Cheney.

The CIA and State Department officials said that a day after Wilson's March 8, 2003, CNN appearance, they attended a meeting at the Vice President's office chaired by Cheney, and it was there that a decision was made to discredit Wilson. Those who attended the meeting included I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff who was indicted in October for lying to investigators, perjury and obstruction of justice related to his role in the Plame Wilson leak, Hadley, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and John Hannah, Cheney's deputy national security adviser, the officials said.

"The way I remember it," the CIA official said about that first meeting he attended in Cheney's office, "is that the vice president was obsessed with Wilson. He called him an 'asshole,' a son-of-a-bitch. He took his comments very personally. He wanted us to do everything in our power to destroy his reputation and he wanted to be kept up to date about the progress."

It's at this point that the digging operations begins into Wilson's background and in all likelyhood the employment of his wife was discovered.

Cheney knew the State Department had prepared a report saying the Niger claims were false, but he thought the report had no merit, the two State Department officials said. Meanwhile, the CIA was preparing information for the vice president and his senior aides on Wilson should the former ambassador decide to speak out against the administration again.

On March 19th, the Iraq War Began.

On March 25th, the executive order granting the Vice-President nearly co-equal powers to the President to classify and declassify information was signed. This document would allow the Vice-President legal cover to release any information which he may have discovered regarding Wilson or others who opposed their view of Iraq and the War.

Wilson began attempting to contact members of Congress behind the scenes concerning the lack of Iraq Nuclear intentions, meanwhile the weapons of mass destruction remained elusive. In May, Wilson went to the Press and began talking to Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times about his trip to Niger, which resulted in a scathing column criticizing the Vice-President.

What in the previous months had been a request to gather information that could be used to discredit Wilson now turned into a full-scale effort involving the Office of the Vice President, the National Security Council, and the State Department to find out how Wilson came to be chosen to investigate the Niger uranium allegations.

"Cheney and Libby made it clear that Wilson had to be shut down," the CIA official said. "This wasn't just about protecting the credibility of the White House. For the vice president, going after Wilson was purely personal, in my opinion."

Cheney was personally involved in this aspect of the information gathering process as well, visiting CIA headquarters to inquire about Wilson, the CIA official said. Hadley had also raised questions about Wilson during this month with the State Department officials and asked that information regarding Wilson's trip to Niger be sent to his attention at the National Security Council.

That's when Valerie Plame Wilson's name popped up showing that she was a covert CIA operative. The former CIA official who works in the counter-proliferation division said another meeting about Wilson took place in Cheney's office, attended by the same individuals who were there in March. But Cheney didn't take part in it, the officials said.

It was at this point that Cheney himself appeared to take a back seat.

"Libby led the meeting," one of the State Department officials said. "But he was just as upset about Wilson as Cheney was."

The officials said that as of late May 2003 the only correspondence they had had was with Libby and Hadley. They said they were unaware who had made the decision to unmask Plame Wilson's undercover CIA status to a handful of reporters.

On June 10th, a memo was attached to CIA document regarding Wilson's Niger trip which (incorrectly) indicated that his wife, a CIA employee, had sent him. The source of this memo was someone within the State Department. Apparently the plot at this time was to create a "false fact" within the intelligence data, then to let that information leak out in various ways so that it's original source couldn't be traced - and with the Vice-President's Office now having the "cover" of being able to declassify such information at will.

By June 23rd, after two more articles on Wilson's Niger trip had appeared, Libby spoke to Judith Miller of the New York Times and informed her that "Wilson's Wife might work for the CIA." which laid the groundwork for the leak to begin and it's origin to be hidden.

On July 6th Wilson's Op-ed "What I didn't find in Africa" was released by the New York Times, but by that point in time the efforts to undermine Wilson were well underway according to Patrick Fitzgerald.

The next day, July 7th, Libby discussed with the White House Press Secretary that "Wilson's Wife worked for the CIA" creating another potential leak source. He spoke again with Judith Miller on July 8th, and with Tim Russert on July 10th (although Wilson's wife was not discussed with Russert).

By now Robert Novak through other reporters and officials to whom the rumor had been spread (by Libby) learned of the connection between Plame and the CIA and had contacted "Official A" (who is generally known to be Karl Rove) indicating that he intended to write an article on the subject, even though the CIA had warned him not too.

On July 14th, Novak's column on Wilson was published - this was the first public revelation of Plame's status as a CIA employee. This exposed not only her, but the CIA anti-proliferation front organization Brewster Jennings & Associates.

We now know due to Newsweek that Valerie Plame WIson was an undercover CIA operative, a NOC. And that her work with in trying to prevent Iran from creating a Nuclear Weapon. As far as I'm concerned Scooter Libby, at the Vice-President's urging has commited Treason and Sedition.

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

The Vice-President, with the tacit aid of the President in giving him declassification authority, attempted to discredit a critic of claims that Iraq was attempting to gain nuclear materials - a claims which was completely correct according to the Dulfer Report - and in the process may have done significant harm to our own efforts to curtail Iran's Nuclear aims.

The President and Vice-President may have maneuvered this situation so that what occurred is technically legal, but as to whether what has occured represents a "High Crime and Misdemeaner" I think the answer is clearly, Yes.

Vyan

LIbby, Cheney and Bush knew Niger claim was false

New unredacted documents in the Libby-Plame investigation reveal that Bush, Cheney and others in the White House were well informed that the CIA did not believe that Iraq had attempted to buy Uranium from Niger in June 2003, over a year after Ambassador Joe Wilsons trip to the region to investigate the claim. From the National Journal.

Vice President Cheney and his then-Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were personally informed in June 2003 that the CIA no longer considered credible the allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials. The new CIA assessment came just as Libby and other senior administration officials were embarking on an effort to discredit an administration critic who had also been saying that the allegations were untrue.

The campaign against Joseph Wilson continued even after the CIA concluded that Iraq had not tried to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger.

CIA analysts wrote then-CIA Director George Tenet in a highly classified memo on June 17, 2003, "We no longer believe there is sufficient" credible information to "conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad." The memo was titled: "In Response to Your Questions for Our Current Assessment and Additional Details on Iraq's Alleged Pursuits of Uranium From Abroad."

Despite the CIA's findings, Libby attempted to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger the previous year to investigate the claims, which he concluded were baseless.

The campaign against Wilson led to the outing of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as an undercover CIA officer -- less than a month after the CIA assessment was completed.

By this point in time the 16-words had already been uttered at the 2003 SOTU, despite George Tenet's repeated attempts to have them removed, the War had been in full swing for two months, and the final report from the Dulfer Report would not be completed for over another full year - the key factor here then is that faced with indications that imminent "Mushroom Clouds", one of the primary justificaions for starting the war without waiting for the inspectors to complete their job, the Bush administration decided to attack the messenger rather than accept the truth.

The new disclosures raise questions as to why Libby and other Bush administration officials continued their efforts to discredit Wilson -- even as they were told that claims about Iraq's having procured uranium from Niger were most likely a hoax.

Why indeed.

The answer may lie in part with the already well-known misgivings about the CIA by Cheney, Libby, and other senior Bush administration officials. At one point during that period -- the summer of 2003 -- Libby confronted a senior intelligence analyst briefing him and the vice president and accused the CIA of willfully misleading him and the administration on Niger. Libby was said to be upset that the CIA, in his view, had routinely minimized the extent to which Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction and was now prematurely attempting to distance itself from the Niger allegations.

Libby had also complained about the CIA's Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control. WINPAC, as the center is known, scrutinizes unconventional-weapons threats to the United States, including the pursuit by both foreign nations and terrorist groups of nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons.

Libby, according to people with knowledge of the events, said that he and Cheney had come to believe that WINPAC was presenting Saddam Hussein's pursuit of such weapons in a far more benign light than Iraq's intents and capabilities reflected. Libby cited CIA bureaucratic inertia and caution and his view that many of WINPAC's analysts were aligned with foreign-policy elites who did not support the war with Iraq.

Basically these guys thought the CIA was lying to them (when it turns out they were actually right on target) - and in retaliation they outed a CIA operative, who just happened to work at WINPAC? Is this the "Exact Same Intelligence" that everyone else received?

I think we can now see why the Phase II Investigation of Adminstration manipulation of Intelligence has been postponed for two years, and why White House Emails seem to be disappearing.

Vyan

The Great Red-Blue Divide

This country has long had a large diversity of social and political views, but more and more this divide seems to have become a yawning chasm - a split between not just Left and Right, but Reality and Faith, Science and Fantasy, Compassion and Profit.

Those on the Right complain that Liberals are brainless "moonbats" who've let their pathological hatred of President Bush grow so rabid that they lost all ability to reason, and blindly accept any "Known Fact^tm" that criticizes the President. According to Charles Krathhammer, their suffering from a psychological disoder which he called "Bush Derangment Syndrome".

Maybe it's little surprise that I disagree with that assessment.

I counter that this is merely another excellent example of what the Self-Righteous Wing of the Republican Party has become excellent at accomplishing -- self-deception. Since the last Presidential Election, in fact since the beginning of this Presidency, the entire Republican Party, -not just Bush - have been faced with increasing challenges, challenges of Reality vs their ideology theories, and they have repeated failed.

Moonbats and BDS aside, and I do not deny that there may indeed people people of this type - some who may believe that "No plane ever hit the Pentagon" or "the levee's were blown up" for example, but there are so many many Genuine Facts ^tm that I think when listed back to back and in chronological order, the truth will make itself clear even to many of those who doggedly resist it. The following is humble, and far from perfect, attempt at assembling these facts into a Chronology of Right-Wing Corruption and Deception in the Bush Era

2000

The first issue that widened the divide was clearly the 2000 election and it's long messy aftermath of hanging chads and Superme Court Intervention which cost Al Gore the election despite the fact that he had won the popular vote. Not even everyone on the left automatically believed the allegations of voter intimidation and disenfrachisement that were circulated at the time. Not everyone believed that this election was "stolen" -- or agreed with Michael Moore's assertion that "Gore won Florida" but it did make many people begin to take notice of this President and his actions.


Many people began almost immediately to distrust him - much of Europe was greatly concerned by his record 163 executions while Texas Governor - but only a few thought that the contentiousness of the 2000 election would become "standard-operating procudure" for the entire nation over the next 4 or more years.


(Since the 2000 election several studies of the ballots have occured, most have indicated that Gore had a slim numerical advantage if both undervotes and overvotes had been included in the count -- but that Gore would have lost if his vote challenge, which focused only on undervotes in certain counties, had his original request been allowed to go forward by the Supreme Court. A more recent study of overvotes with right-in preferences indicates that Gore may actually have won Florida by as many 30,000 votes. One of the Bush foot soldiers who helped stop the Florida Recount was John Bolton.)

2001

• In January the Bush Administration ignored warnings that their greatest challenge would be "dealing with Osama Bin Ladin and al Qaeda", refusing to have a briefing or meeting on the issue for 8 months and instead chose to spend their entire first NSA briefing discussing Iraq and how to oust Saddam.
• Vice-President Cheney participates in a Energy Task Force, whose attendies are shrouded in Secrecy, and which according to subsequent reports included a discussion of carving up Iraqi Oil Fields for American Companies after the removal of Saddam.
  
• When the "California Energy Crisis" occured as a result of corrupt practices by companies such as Enron - the Bush Administration refused to consider caps to prevent prince gauging, a decision which ultimately cost California $50 Billion. Money which still hasn't been paid back.
  
• In order to boost the flagging post DotCom/Enron economy, Bush implements the first round of tax cuts (which inordinately benefits those who don't need them), almost immediately this results in a dramatic reversal of the Federal Budget surplus which had existed sinced 1998, and a return to defecit spending.
  
• Bush ignored the August 6th, 2001 PDB warning that "Bin Laden Determined to Attack within the U.S." He took no action. Shook no trees, connected no dots.
  
• 9-11 Attack occurs while Bush reads "My Pet Goat" to school children in Florida.
  
• On Sept 12th Bush asks NSC Counter-Terrorism Chief Richard Clark about 9-11 "See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way..." Clark does look into it, and finds nothing. Cheney concurs on Meet the Press that there is no evidence that Saddam had anything to do with 9-11.
  
• Bush submits the U.S. Patriot Act to Congress which significantly enhances the powers of the government to conduct domestic surveillance and intelligence gathering... but still unsatisfied by the additional powers granted by the act Bush secretly authorizes NSA wiretaps of U.S Citizens without requesting warrants from the FISA Court. The CIA also begin it's Rendition program which allows for terrorist detainees to be held in Secret Foreign U.S. Prisons, without access to legal council or protection from human rights abuses.
  
• Less than two months after the 9-11 attack, while Bush claims to want "Osama bin Laden Dead or Alive", he began redeploying vital assests and troops from Afghanistan to Iraq (despite there beingl no evidence of a link to Saddam). This shift ultimately allowed Bin Laden to escape Tora Bora.

2002

• By Feb of 2002 the Defense Intelligence Agency had determined that the one person who had made claims linking 9-11 and Al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein was a fabricator and couldn't be trusted, yet President Bush continued to make claims linking Saddam to al-Qaeda & 9-11 for the next 2 years (More recently he has said he "never made any such claim").
• President Bush signs a Feb 2002 Memo stating that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees, and that their humane treatment should be contigent upon "Military Neccesity", not the Constitution, U.S. Law or even the Uniform Code of Military Justice which strictly forebids the "maltreatment" of prisoners.
  
• March 2002, Ambassador Joe Wilson returns from African at the request of the CIA and reports that claims that Iraq had attempted to by processed Uranium Ore (Yellowcake) were false. After several months of inaction by the Bush Administration, he eventually writes an Op-Ed on his trip, his veracity and credibility were attacked by the Bush Administration, his wife's status as a CIA Employee was leaked to the press and reported by Robert Novak. The CIA refers the matter to the Justice Dept for Investigation. Meanwhile Under Secretary of State John Bolton arranges to have Jose Bustani, a Brazillian diplomat fired because he insisted on sending weapons inspectors to Iraq.
  
• President Bush says "He's not that concerned with Osama bin Laden", and opposes formation of the 9-11 Commision to investigate the attack.
  
• In Mid 2002, George Tenet and Condoleeza Rice meet with their British Counterparts who reported back to Tony Blair that the "that U.S. was determined to go to war with Iraq, and that the "[wmd intelligence] facts were being fixed around [that] policy".
• Information that Iraq continued to maintain WMD's and/or weapons programs were being provided by a single source - an expatriate Iraqi being held by German Intelligence code-named "Curveball", who had been determined to be "unreliable" by the Defense Intellegence Agency, yet his claims were heavily relied upon in the National Intelligence Estimate that was provided to Congress prior to their vote on the Iraq War Resolution.
• Even without the doubts concerning Curveball, the complete Classified NIE contained significant dispute from the State Department and Department of Energy concerning the continuing of Iraq Nuclear programs involving the suspicion by the State Deparment's Intelligence Division (INR) that the Niger purchase documents were forged (a view reached independantly from Joe Wilson's claims), and that the aluminum tubes were not intended to be used for centerfuges - however these concerns were not included in the unclassified version of the report that was provided to full membership Congress
  
• By late 2002, President Bush with Tony Blair's support had begun pushing the UN to take action on Iraq and managed to get Resolution 1441 passed which authorized the UNSOM Weapons Inspectors to return.
• October 2002 Guantanamo officials "request that additional techniques beyond those in the field manual be approved for use." against terrorist suspects who have been captured in Afghanistan.
  
• Bush submits the Iraq Force Resolution (HJ 141) to Congress which deviates significantly from the Constitutional Process which grants Congress the sole authority to declare war and instead shifts the power to be made based on a "Presidential Determination" of Saddam Hussein's full disclosure of his weapons and compliance to all relevant UN Resolutions. The resolution passes, but requires that the President must first ensure that all diplomatic means have been exhausted before using force - a point that is thoroughly hammered home by Sen John Kerry.
  
• December 2002 Rumsfeld - in accordance with the memo previously signed by President Bush suspending the Geneva Conventions- prescribes new interrogation policy for Guantanamo, authorizing "stress positions," hooding, 20-hour interrogations, removal of clothing, exploiting phobias to induce stress (e.g., fear of dogs), prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation, and forced grooming. These techniques soon spread to Afghanistan and later to Iraq. Later that month FBI officials begin to complain to Defense Department of abuses at Guantanamo and of Afghan detainees killed during interrogation in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Force Base, Afghanistan.

2003

• During his State of the Union Address, President Bush utters the infamous 16-words claiming that Iraq had attempted to purchase Uranium from Africa in order to build nuclear weapons although this language had previously been removed from the speech at the repeated request of George Tenet - the information remained Unconfirmed and was based on a document already suspected as being a forgery. The claim was reportedly removed, then placed back in the speech by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.
• January 2003 Rumsfeld rescinds blanket approval of some techniques but indicates techniques may continue based on his individual case approval. Rumsfeld designates a "Working Group" to assess legal, policy and operational issues for detainee interrogation in the "war on terrorism."
  
• Dept. Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz tells Congress "To assume we're going to pay for [The Iraq Conflict and Reconstruction] all is just wrong." He says that estimates of $95 Billion are "too high".
  
• Bush Adminstration Officials such as Secretary of State Powell and Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley continue to claim that Iraq has developed and retains Chemical and Biological weapons, quoting interviews with an Iraqi defector, General Hussein Kamel, but fail to mention that during these interviews Kamel also stated that he had personally ordered the Iraqi Stockpiles of chemical weapons destroyed way back in 1991 following the first Gulf War.
  
• After four months of searching in February of 2003 the UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors had found absolutely nothing - no mobile biological labs, (only a set of al-samoud missles which they promptly destroyed) - supporting the claim that Saddam either possessed WMD's, WMD programs or a Nuclear program. They called the US provided intelligence information - "garbage".
• Iraq provides a full disclosure document of their current weapons programs, which indicates that they "Have No wmd's" - the Bush Administration flatly rejects it.
• Although the Bush Administration has repeatedly claimed that "everyone had the same information" concerning Iraq's WMD programs, including France, Germany and Russia - President Bush decides not to seek a second authorization from the UN for further action against Iraq due to the opposition of France, China and Russia. He begins to form the "Coalition of the Willing" (CPA). (Germany also opposes military action, a position which is quite telling since Curveball, the primary source for allegations of Iraq WMD's, remained in German custody - if they didn't believe him, why did we?)
  
• April 2003 Rumsfeld approves 24 of the recommended techniques for use at Guantanamo, including dietary and environmental manipulation, sleep adjustment, false flag and isolation.
• Secret No-Bid Reconstruction Contracts offered to Kellog-Brown & Root (KBR), a Haliburton Subsidiary (Dick Cheney's former company), in preparation for a post-Saddam Iraq.
  
• March 2003, Bush makes a determination that "Saddam can't be trusted" and although the UN inspectors haven't yet finished their job he orders them out of Iraq and on the 19th begins the invasion. Bush and Rumsfeld ignore requests for 500,000 troops by Paul Bremer, and advise from Gen Shinseki that more troops will be needd to "Keep the peace" once the fighting has ended - later claiming that he received "no such requests".
  
• Shock And Awe - estimates vary from 15,000 to 20,000 Iraqis killed in the first few days by U.S. Bombs. The U.S. Attempts many "Decapitation Strikes" against Saddam - all of which fail. Troops who do find 380 tons of explosives at al-Qaqaa - but these were not connected to Chemical Weapons and subsequently left unguarded and looted.
  
• Private Jessica Lynch captured, the news reports that she "fought valiantly" until captured and that her rescue was a "heroic effort" - but subsequent reports show that this story is exaggerated and false.
  
• On May 1st Bush declares Mission Accomplished aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier "Major Combat Operations in Iraq have ended" which was followed by widespread looting in Iraq. Gradually an anti-American Insurgency begins to form and spread from disaffected former members of the Iraqi Military and foreign fighters who in all likelyhood may have been trained by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and had escaped as U.S. forces were prematurely committed to Iraq.
  
• August 2003 Rumsfeld sends Guantanamo commander (General Sanchez) to Iraq to "gitmo-ize" Iraqi detention facilities, promoting wide-scale deployment of more aggressive interrogation methods in Iraq in order to gain better intelligence information on the insurgency.
  
• Bush tells the growing Iraqi insurgency to "Bring 'em On". They do. Saddam Hussein is captured in a spider-hole, Osama bin Laden isn't.
  
• September 2003 Lt. Gen. Sanchez authorizes 29 interrogation techniques for use in Iraq, including the use of dogs, stress positions, sensory deprivation, loud music and light control, based on Rumsfeld's April 16 techniques and suggestions from captain of military unit formerly in Afghanistan.
• October - December, Torture and serious abuses of detainees take place at Abu Ghraib in a special unit which remains under direct Command of Gen Sanchez. Gen Karpinski, the overall Abu Ghraib commander, is kept "out of the loop". Reporter Sy Hersh in his book "Chain of Command" reveals that the original idea behind the sexually humiliating photos taken at Abu Ghraib, was to use them as blackmail so that the newly released prisoners -- many of whom were ordinary Iraqi thieves or even civilian bystanders rounded up in dragnets -- could be convinced to act as informants against the insurgency. "We operate on guilt, [Muslims] operate on shame," Hersh explained. "
• Rather than being greated as "Liberators" as claimed by VP Cheney, the Iraq invasion "galvanizes al-Qaeda" and begins to "swell their ranks".
  
• The Federal Debt reaches over $6 Trillion.
  

2004

• January 2004 Spc Joseph Darby gives Army criminal investigators a CD containing the Abu Ghraib photographs depicting detainee torture and abuses. Rumsfeld informed.
• The Medicare Prescription Drug Plan passes in the middle of the night after extensive strong-arm tactics by House Majority Leader Tom Delay. Claims are that the plan will only cost $80 Billion, but that estimate quickly inflates.
  
• February 2004 Maj. Gen. Taguba completes investigation; reports of "systematic" and "sadistic,blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib.
• April 2004, 60 Minutes II airs segment showing Abu Ghraib photos. The insurgency intensifies. President Bush delays the scheduled Iraqi election to select an interim Parliament.
• June, Transfer of Sovereignty from Coalition Provisional Authority to Interim Iraqi Government is completeed although $20 Billion in Oil Revenues under control of the CPA disappears. Bush is interviewed by Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald concerning the Plame-CIA Lead investigation "The leaking of classified information is a very serious matter."
  
• Rep Tom DeLay is admonished three times by the House Ethics Committee for 1) offering a bribes to get votes on the Medicare Bill, 2) misusing Homeland Security resources in order to get a quorum of vote on Texas Redistricting (which alone gained the Republicans 5 additional seats), and 3) accepting inappropriate gifts from lobbyist such as Jack Abramoff.
  
• August 2004, Rumsfeld-appointed panel reports Rumsfeld interrogation policy led to confusion in the field as to what techniques were authorized; also reports that civilian Defense Department leaders failed in their interrogation and detention duties.
• Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld offers his resignation in the wake of Abu Ghraib, President Bush rejects it.
• The New York Times delays reporting the NSA Wiretap Story after the Publisher and Editor are called to the Oval Office by President Bush.
  
• The FDA finds and notes contamination problems with the creation of the 2004 flu vaccine. Yet, consistent with a general Bush policy to back-down on regulatory enforcement, they choose to ask that company to volantarily resolve the problem. They didn't. It eventually requirse the intervention of British authorities, who oversaw the flu manufacturing plant, to do something to protect the public and the result was aflu vaccination crisis.
• Bush debates Presidential Challanger John Kerry and claims that he never said he "Doesn't think about Osama bin Laden". Kerry is accused of being a "flip-flopper" and fails to respond to the "Swift Boat Vets" who accuse him of falsifying the after-action report which led to his medal awards in Vietnam, and making false claims to Congress concerning "atrocities" which occured during the War, even though all available documentation and transcripts of testimony support Kerry's account he' s defeated in a close contest after exit polls initially indicate a Kerry victory and there are yet again, rampant allegations of voter disenfranchizement and tabulation errors in both Florida and Ohio. As a result Senator Barbara Boxer pratically stages a revolt in Congress.
  
• November, CIA's full investigation of Iraq WMD's (The Dulfer Report) is completed and indicates that Saddam Hussein did not have chemical weapons, nuclear weapons or any current programs to reconstitute these weapons. Bush claims that it doesn't matter, that the War was justified even without the WMD's because "Hussein was still a threat".
• U.S. Forces take back the city of Fallajah from insurgents in a violent battle, during the fight White Phosphorous is used on the civilian populace, including children, resulting chemical reaction that burns the flesh off of people.
  
• December, the First Iraqi Election Occurs with massive turnout, although exactly what and who is being voted on remains unclear. Iraq War Price tag tops over $100 Billion. Donald Rumsfeld is asked "Why are we forced to scavenge for Armor" while visiting the troops in Kuwait.
  
• The Federal Debt reaches $7 billion.
  

2005

• An Audit indicates that Iraq CPA "lost" another $8.8 Billion in funds.
• Using documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, the ACLU sues Donald Rumsfeld (and others) for their involvment in Prisoner Abuse at Guantanemo and Abu Ghraib.
  
• President Bush after "winning" re-election decides he now has "political capital, and he's going to spend it" - on turning Social Security into a Privatized/Personallized investment system. His plan dies on the vein - just like nomination of Harriet Meyers to the Supreme Court, which is knocked down by the far-right wing of his own party. Bush is Official a Lame-duck, and things really start to go sour.
  
• Prepacked News Reports designed to support Bush Administration agenda items are found to have been provided by the Goverment and presented on local news stations as genuine.
  
• The Terry Schiavo Controversy explodes and halts the functioning of Government. President Bush dramatically flies back to Washington in the dead of night to sign emergency legislation designed to allow a Federal Judicial Review of the case. Heart Surgeon and apparently closet Neurologist Bill Frist claims "she seems to be conscious and reacting to the light" after reviewing a few minutes of video tape. Talking points are circulated on the Senate Floor about how this is a "Bad issue" for democrats. Eventually the ruling that Schavio is indeed in a "permanent vegitative state" is upheld and she is permitted to die as per her own requests (as noted by three witnesses) - the autopsy shows that significant portions of her brain had atrophied and that she was completely blind due to brain damage. President Bush trumpets the "Culture of Life" despite the fact that he had signed the Texas Futile Care Act into Law while Governor of Texas - a Law that takes the decision to maintain the life of patient out of the hands of the family and gives it to the Doctors and Hospital when that patients is unable to pay the bill.
  
• John Bolton is nominated by President Bush as the new Ambassador to the UN. He is reported as a "tough guy" who will "clean up the UN" following the overblown Oil-for-food Scandal, but his nomination hits a snag when it is discovered that he attempted to have a State Department Analyst fired for trying to keep exaggerated claims of Cuban WMD'S from one of his speeches. His nomination is permanently derailed when it's discovered that he attempted to access NSA Intercepts in order to spy on other members of the government. President Bush eventually grants him a recess appointment which expires at the end of the current Congress. Congress never discovers exactly who Bolton was trying to spy on, or why.
  
• Amnesty International, the Worlds Leading Human Rights Organization, calls for the investigation and if found warranted the indictment, prosecution and imprisonment of George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, George Tenet and Lt. General Sanchez for International War Crimes for Torture at Guantanemo, Bagram AFB in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq.
• New York Times reporter Judith Miller is jailed from refusing to reveal her sources on the Plame-leak, after a personal visit releasing her from promise of confidentiality fromVice President Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby she is released and Libby is indicted for Obstruction of Justice, and Perjury. Presidential Dept Chief of Staff Karl Rove remains under investigation.
• Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist calls for an investigation of the Secret Prison Leaks, and even threatens to have the Security Clearance of the two top Democrats in the Senate revoked.
  
• Category 5 Hurricane Katrina hits the Gulf Coast - unlike his dramatic cross-country late night flight in response to Terry Schiavo - President Bush goes to play guitar with a Country Singer. But not to worry, he left Fema Director Michael "you're doing a heck of a job" Brown(ie) in charge. With little to zero Federal help, New Orleans Mayor Nagin manages to evacuate 80% of his resident before the levee failes- still thousands remain trapped by flood in their homes and at the Superdome without food or water. The Department of Homeland Securitytells the RedCross to Stand-down, and FEMA blocked aid to Jefferson Parish - while the one lone FEMA person in New Orleans is practically screaming for help via his Blackberry, and Brownie goes out to dinner. Brown is eventually forced to retire, but not after blaming the problem on everyone else. Gas prices skyrocketed to $3.40/gallon and Bush's approval ratings drop down to 36%.
  
• Bill Frist is investigated for SEC violations.
  
• Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is indicted for money laundering in Texas.
  
• Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleads guilting for accepting $2.1 million in bribes from Defense Contractors, and reportedly wore a wire during the investigation.

2006

• Republican Lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleads guilty for providing bribes to members of Congress, Rep Tom Delay permenently steps down from his leadership post.
  
• After extensive negotiation with Sen John McCain, Bush signs the Torture Ban into law - and then immediately releases a "Signing Statement" that claims that the President isn't required to abide by the law he just signed.
  
• The death toll of U.S. Soldiers in Iraq passes the 2200 mark, and reports indicate that approx 80% of U.S. Casualties could have been prevent with proper armor.
  
• The Federal Debt Tops $8 Trillion, and our future - the future of our children continues to be mortgaged.
  
• New Revelations on the NSA Wiretap story indicate that Defense Attorneys and the Justice Dept are worried that "fruit of the poison tree" arguments may completely scuttile pending and Federal Prosecutions or overturn existing convictions of Terrorist Suspects. (Which IMO would make us considerably less safe than we were previously!!) Meanwhile in a replay of the COINTELPRO Scandal of the 50-70's, the FBI and Pentagon have been domestically spying on U.S. Citizens, including anti-War Protestors, members of PETA, Poverty Relief Agencies, Greenpeace, Gay Military Personnel, and possibly even CNN Reporter Christian Amanpour..and that illegally gathered NSA Wiretap information (aka Poisoned Fruit!) may have been used by these agencies in this spying.
  

Now many of those on the Far Right-wing would have you believe that all of the above is either bad luck, coincidence or a collection of Left-wing smears. And certainly resonable people may certainly disagree with one or more specific points, but I think that if you look at the totality of it all, the ongoing pattern of disregard, negligence, greed and power-mongering not just by Bush, but by his political appointees and many of the major players in the Republican party, it becomes difficult to escape the reality.

This Presidency has been a total disaster of historic proportions, with repercussions which will continue for decades.<>Sadly, escape it many will - by burying deeper and deeper into denial and obfuscation. And so, the divide continues to widen further and further. I fear there is literally nothing that could possibly happen to snap us all back into the same reality once more, if what we've already seen isn't enough.

Vyan

Bush Re-Lying on Iraq

Last Friday on Veteran's Day and again yesterday the President fired his harshes attacks ever on critics of the Iraq War and Intelligence failures which lead us into this conflict. On Meet the Press, the President has been supported by John McCain "I don't think the President lied"...

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decisions or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," the president said in a Veterans Day speech in Pennsylvania.

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges," he said. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."

But was it the truth?

Bush: "Some Democrats and antiwar critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war," he said. "These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein."

Well, that's isn't entirely true now is it? The Washington Post on Saturday responded to the Presidents claims:

President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.

Neither assertion is wholly accurate.

But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, briefing reporters Thursday, countered "the notion that somehow this administration manipulated the intelligence." He said that "those people who have looked at that issue, some committees on the Hill in Congress, and also the Silberman-Robb Commission, have concluded it did not happen."

But the only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions. And Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said in releasing his report on March 31, 2005: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

In the same speech, Bush asserted that "more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power." Giving a preview of Bush's speech, Hadley had said that "we all looked at the same intelligence."

But Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers. Also, the National Intelligence Estimate summarizing the intelligence community's views about the threat from Iraq was given to Congress just days before the vote to authorize the use of force in that country.

In addition, there were doubts within the intelligence community not included in the NIE. And even the doubts expressed in the NIE could not be used publicly by members of Congress because the classified information had not been cleared for release. For example, the NIE view that Hussein would not use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or turn them over to terrorists unless backed into a corner was cleared for public use only a day before the Senate vote.

The New York Times on the issue of "Pressure applied to analysts".

Mr. Bush has said in recent days that the first phase of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation on Iraq found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence. . . . Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, said in 2003 that there was "significant pressure on the intelligence community to find evidence that supported a connection" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The C.I.A. ombudsman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration's "hammering" on Iraq intelligence was harder than he had seen in his 32 years at the agency. . . .

Further the Senate Report included information which was later revealed as Under Secretary of State John Bolton attempting to bolster reports of Cuban Wmd's.

(U)When Chairman Roberts asked whether analysts had been pressured to change their assessments at a Committee hearing on June 19,2003,one [INR] analyst stood up and said that he had some encounters involving some pressure ”but noted that he had not changed his assessments as a result of that pressure.The analyst agreed to meet with Committee staff following the hearing to discuss the issue.

(U)The analyst told Committee staff that his concerns about being pressured were not related to Iraq,but rather to an incident that had occurred with the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security concerning Cuba ’s BW program.The analyst had received a routine request to declassify language concerning Cuba ’s BW program for a speech that the Under Secretary intended to give in an open forum.The analyst told Committee staff that the text of the Under Secretary ’s speech contained a sentence which said that the U.S. believes Cuba has a developmental,offensive biological warfare program and is providing assistance to other rogue state programs.The text also called for international observers of
Cuba ’s biological facilities.The analyst said the portion of the speech he was given contained top secret codeword information.

There was also a report on a Pentagon "Desk Officer" in the Office of Special Plans who I strongly suspect is actually Lt. Col Karen Kwaitkowski who has been extremely vocal in her criticism of the Iraq War and Bush Administration.

(U)Committee staff contacted a former desk officer in the Office of the Deputy Under
Secretary of Defense for Special Plans and NESA who had come to the Committee ’s attention through press accounts of the desk officer ’s experiences.

(U)The desk officer told Committee staff that she never worked the Iraq issue and had no direct knowledge of any attempts to pressure or coerce intelligence analysts. She obtained the information that she provided to Committee staff based on looking at the secret level intranet in the Pentagon and through discussions with colleagues.

(U)The desk officer told Committee staff that a DIA senior intelligence analyst had told her that he had been pressured by the Deputy Under Secretary to change a briefing he was giving on Iraq and that he refused to change the briefing because the intelligence did not support the Deputy Under Secretary ’s conclusion.She said that after this incident the senior analyst was excluded from bilateral exchange visits.Committee staff interviewed the DIA senior intelligence analyst (See page 280)who said that he had not been asked to change any briefings on Iraq, but said he was asked not to use the word “assassinations ”when giving a brief on the Israeli Defense Force.He provided no information to show that he had been excluded from the bilateral visits because of his analysis.

It's interesting to note that the "Desk Officer" heard one thing, but when the person she heard it from was brought before the commitee - he denied everything. If there was in fact pressure, one of the key elements of that pressure would have been to "deny the pressure". It's the cornerstone of any cover-up.

"First Rule of Fight Club: You do not talk about Fight Club. Second Rule of Fight Club: You do not talk about Fight Club".

What the British Government felt according to the Downing Street Minutes:

It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.

And then you have other countries such as France, Russia and Germany who voted in the UN against the invasion of Iraq and were accused by Bush's supporters of doing so because they'd received kick-backs from Saddam Hussein via the Oil-for-Food program. An allegation that has proved uniformly false.

Bush says now that Congress received the same intellegence, but there are many reasons to doubt that claim.

Media Matters: It should be further noted, that the Bush Whitehouse initially refused to supply any Intelligence Information to the Congress -- the White House reportedly objected to the production of such a [National Intelligence Estimate] at the time. An article in the September 22, 2003, edition of The New Republic described how the then-chairman of the committee, Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-IL) pushed for the NIE after reviewing a classified CIA assessment of the Iraqi threat that reportedly took "the most aggressive view of all available information":

Stunned by what they read, Graham, Durbin and others on the committee intensified their demands for [then-director of central intelligence George J.] Tenet to produce an NIE on the Iraq threat. It was not a request that Tenet could easily fulfill. "The White House didn't want it," says a source with direct knowledge of the effort. "They wanted to draw their own analytical conclusions

In short, Bush's claim that Congress received the same information as the White House is simply false. They don't get the same information, and even what they did get they had to beg in order to get. But all of this back and forth sometimes obscures the core issue -- why was the intelligence so wrong?

Well it turns out that if you looked closely at it - it wasn't wrong. What started this entire hullabaloo with the President is the recent declassification of a DIA report concerning an detainee who repeatedly claimed that Iraq was working with Al-Qaeda - who simply "wasn't credible".

On November 6, both the Post and the Times reported on a newly declassified document proving that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had voiced strong doubts about the credibility of an Al Qaeda operative whose statements provided the basis for many of the administration's prewar claims regarding Iraqi training of terrorists. The DIA report -- produced and distributed in February 2002 -- raised serious questions about the first interrogation report on the operative and determined that "it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers." Both newspapers noted that administration officials, in late 2002 and early 2003, repeatedly cited the alleged chemical and biological training as proof of an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection but never noted that the DIA considered this intelligence suspect. Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), who released the new materials, stated "that he could not be certain that White House officials read the DIA report, but his 'presumption' was that someone at the National Security Council saw it because it was sent there," according to the Post

More on this Detainee from William Rivers Pitt.

The operative, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was exposed as a liar by the Defense Intelligence Agency in February of 2002. Their report bluntly stated that al-Libi was deliberately misleading interrogators, and any information he provided was not to be trusted. By 2004, al-Libi had completely recanted all of his testimony.

"The (Defense Intelligence Agency) document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility," reported the Times. "Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as 'credible' evidence that Iraq was training al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons. Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that 'we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.'"

This is information that the Administration possessed, but certainly didn't share either with the American people or Congress. Even when you look at the information that was eventually provided to the Congress via the NIE - there was a substantial section questioning the conclusions on Iraq's Nuclear Threat supplied by the State Departmentt.

NIE "key judgments" had included a lengthy dissent on behalf of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) regarding the claim that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.

That dissent had included the likelyhood that the Niger Uranium documents were forgeries.

Other information provided in that report was found by the Senate Intelligence Committee to be "totally wrong", particularly when the informant Curveball was relied upon.

In a scathing report released Thursday, President Bush's intelligence commission found that the CIA "failed to convey to policy-makers new information casting serious doubt on the reliability of a human intelligence source known as 'Curveball."' The commission found that several agency officers said they had doubts about the source and raised those doubts with senior leadership, including then-CIA Director George Tenet. In separate statements Friday, Tenet and former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin denied the accounts. "It is deeply troubling to me that there was information apparently available within CIA as of late September or October of 2002 indicating that Curveball may have been a fabricator," Tenet said in a detailed seven-page rebuttal. "There is nothing more serious or galvanizing in the intelligence business than associating the word fabricator with a human source." McLaughlin said "unequivocally" that he wouldn't have allowed Curveball's information to be used "if someone had made these doubts clear".

Despite the apparent concerns, the commission found that information from Curveball remained a centerpiece of former Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations about the need to attack Iraq, as well as in an authoritative intelligence estimate prepared for policy-makers in the run-up to the Iraq war.

From the Dulfer Report on Curveball.

...the Dulfer Report showed... that many key allegations of WMD activity by Saddam all came from a single source, code-named Curveball. A source that his own German intelligence handlers found "not credible", yet his claims of mobile laboratories and imminent mushroom clouds still managed to find their way into Presidential Speeches and public comments by Secretary Powell, then-NSA Chief Condoleeza Rice and even Clinton Admin hold-over George Tenet, Director of the CIA.

So we have one liar in Guantanemo (al-Libi), another liar in Germany (Curveball) and a set of forged documents from Niger that apparently no one noticed except for members of the INR. Only the DIA had noted al-Libi's fabrications and only the DIA had even bothered to actually go visit Curveball "face-to-face" - the result of that meeting was a complete loss in confidence in that source by those who took the trip to Germany. CIA had no clue, and apparently neither did Congress.

Meanwhile the President and his chief Adversers ignored (or were blocked from learning) of warnings coming from the DIA in Feb 2002, the INR and Joe Wilson's report to the CIA on uranium sales - and continued making wildly inaccurate claims:

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

- Dick Cheney, 8/26/2002

There is already a mountain of evidence that Saddam Hussein is gathering weapons for the purpose of using them. And adding additional information is like adding a foot to Mount Everest.

- Ari Fleischer, 9/6/2002

We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

- Condoleeza Rice, 9/8/2002

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.

- George W. Bush, 9/12/2002

Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons. We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons - the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.

- George W. Bush, 10/5/2002

And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons.

- George W. Bush, 10/7/2002

After eleven years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.

- George W. Bush, 10/7/2002

We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas.

- George W. Bush, 10/7/2002

Iraq could decide on any given day to provide biological or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or to individual terrorists ...The war on terror will not be won until Iraq is completely and verifiably deprived of weapons of mass destruction.

- Dick Cheney, 12/1/2002

If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.

- Ari Fleischer, 12/2/2002

We know for a fact that there are weapons there.

- Ari Fleischer, 1/9/2003

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

- George W. Bush, 1/28/2003

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.

- George W. Bush, 1/28/2003

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.

- Colin Powell, 2/5/2003

There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction. If biological weapons seem too terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling.

- Colin Powell, 2/5/2003

If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us ... But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct.

- Colin Powell, 2/28/2003

Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. We know that based on intelligence, that has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

- Dick Cheney, 3/16/2003

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

- George W. Bush, 3/17/2003

Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly ... all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.

- Ari Fleischer, 3/21/2003

We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

- Donald Rumsfeld, 3/30/2003

Yet, when UN Inspectors re-entered Iraq in the Winter of 2002 following the passage of HJ 141 (The Iraq War Resolution) and UN Security Council Resolution 1441 -- they found nothing (except a few missles whose range was 15 miles beyond sanctioned limits).

CBS News - Inspectors Call U.S. Tips 'Garbage'

Feb. 20, 2003
U.N. weapons inspectors prepare to investigate a
private battery acid plant outside of Baghdad.  (AP)

So frustrated have the inspectors become that one
source has referred to the U.S. intelligence they've
been getting as "garbage after garbage after garbage."

(CBS) While diplomatic maneuvering continues over
Turkish bases and a new United Nations resolution,
inside Iraq, U.N. arms inspectors are privately
complaining about the quality of U.S. intelligence and
accusing the United States of sending them on
wild-goose chases. 

CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports the U.N.
has been taking a precise inventory of Iraq's
al-Samoud 2 missile arsenal, determining how many
there are and where they are.

Discovering that the al-Samoud 2 has been flying too
far in tests has been one of the inspectors' major
successes. But the missile has only been exceeding its
93-mile limit by about 15 miles and that, the Iraqis
say, is because it isn't yet loaded down with its
guidance system. The al-Samoud 2 is not the
800-mile-plus range missile that Secretary of State
Colin Powell insists Iraq is developing.

In fact, the U.S. claim that Iraq is developing
missiles that could hit its neighbors – or U.S. troops
in the region, or even Israel – is just one of the
claims coming from Washington that inspectors here are
finding increasingly unbelievable. The inspectors have
become so frustrated trying to chase down unspecific
or ambiguous U.S. leads that they've begun to express
that anger privately in no uncertain terms.

U.N. sources have told CBS News that American tips
have lead to one dead end after another.

Normally Senior Advisers such as Tenet and Powell would be relied upon to provide information to Congress directly, either in report format or via testimony. Although the full investigation of how or why intelligence information may have been manipulated within the Bush Administration has yet to take place -- it seems clear based on many reports and most obviously the treatment of Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame as well as comment by the CIA ombudsman that in the cases of Tenet and Powell, their were mid-level politcal appointees who were prioritizing, de-prioritizing and coloring certain reports which fit their own agenda and preeferred opinion - rather than the facts.

Bush argues "Garbage in - Garbage out", but it's not really that simple. It's common today to sort your garbage prior to simply throwing it into the can -- and apparently it was the sifting, filtering and vetting process to seperate the credible information from the flat-out incredible that broke down -- or was deliberately subverted.

How much Bush was involved or aware of this at the time remains an open question -- but his comments now, in the face of such overwhelming amounts of information show that whether or not he was deliberately lying then - he's definately lying now.

Vyan