Have WMDs been found in Iraq?

Parent Cafe
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<p>Yes, especially the OSP. The Pentagon’s Inspector General issued a report in 2007 that concluded the OSP “developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers”:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.npr.org/documents/2007/feb/dod_iog_iraq_summary.pdf[/url]”>http://www.npr.org/documents/2007/feb/dod_iog_iraq_summary.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Because a presidential election is fast approaching.</p>

<p>Plus, they’re very entertaining!</p>

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<p>Think what you like (by the way it is pragmatism or reality). The American intelligence community wasn’t the only one that thought there were WMD’s over there. Two notably anti-war countries, Germany and France, had the same conclusions. I’m quite certain you aren’t suggesting that we influenced their intelligence agencies?</p>

<p>I do agree they are entertaining. Everyone has their opinion and they are all (including mine) meaningless in the big picture.</p>

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<p>That’s not why we went to war, though. As Paul Wolfowitz says that was the bureaucratic convenience. And even on that point, we didn’t have to fight a war to establish this, or at the very least could’ve waited more time and exercised more care. There was a rush to war.</p>

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<p>But some of them are about really crucial issues. It’s not okay, in my opinion, to brush under the rug all the lies that got us to where we are and not use that experience to inform us about the way out. You can blithely say it was all inevitable. I am not so blithe when it comes to the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.</p>

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<p>Exactly my point. If not WMD’s something else would have been used as a reason. I can’t say much. I voted for the guy twice (the 2nd time under duress…the democrats ran a total, incompetent, left-wing whacko and I couldn’t pull the trigger on him). </p>

<p>My point about the opinion is that these debates don’t do anything to solve the problems. We have to stop voting for the same politico types over and over. Reagan was the last real breath of fresh air in politics. I’m not convinced our current choices are any different than 4 years ago. We only want candidates that will tell us what we WANT to hear…not what we NEED to hear.</p>

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<p>No doubt.</p>

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<p>If they tell us what we need to hear, they’ll never win the election.</p>

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<p>In one instance of which I’m aware, the CIA ignored intelligence from a high-ranking member of the Iraqi government that turned out to be chillingly accurate in hindsight. The French intelligence service brokered the contact:</p>

<p>[Iraqi</a> diplomat gave U.S. prewar WMD details - Lisa Myers & the NBC News Investigative Unit - MSNBC.com](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11927856/]Iraqi”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11927856/)</p>

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<p>“Think what you like (by the way it is pragmatism or reality). The American intelligence community wasn’t the only one that thought there were WMD’s over there. Two notably anti-war countries, Germany and France, had the same conclusions.”</p>

<p>Curveball was in German custody. They thought they had found the real deal, and shared that intelligence with both France and the U.S. When they discovered he was an absolute and complete fraud, they shared that information with both the French and the U.S. </p>

<p>In 2002, they did NOT come to the same conclusions. </p>

<p>There WAS NO DATA, and no other source of intelligence.</p>

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<p>We can (and likely will) argue til the cows come home. I’m more concerned with fixing the growing list of ills in this country than rehashing what happened. Let’s prevent it from happening again. That can only start when we decide we want to hear the truth and make the hard choices. Electing anyone that is anything short of brutally honest is a problem. The issues is true, however, that we won’t elect anyone that is honest. We only want to hear what will make us feel better.</p>

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<p>Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2004?</p>

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<p>“We can (and likely will) argue til the cows come home. I’m more concerned with fixing the growing list of ills in this country than rehashing what happened. Let’s prevent it from happening again. That can only start when we decide we want to hear the truth and make the hard choices.”</p>

<p>That is precisely why the record needs to be set straight. That bipartisan foreign and military policy toward Iraq has been both a political and humanitarian disaster, and stems (in both parties) from a worldview based upon cultural and political hegemony of the United States in the Middle East. The Big Lie concocted by Clinton/Tenet in early 1998 was an attempt to cover up genocide under Article 2, section C of the United Nations Convention on Genocide, to weaken an entire nation so that it would throw out its leader and invite the U.S. in. More than a million people died in the genocide, half of them children. The Big Lie, concocted without any intelligence support whatsoever, resulted in Congress, led by the most experienced Democrats, calling for war, passing the illegal Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, and Clinton throwing the U.N. weapons inspectors (who knew the “intelligence” was just made up) out of Iraq, and bombing the country in the largest aerial bombing of a sovereign nation by the U.S. since Vietnam.</p>

<p>Bush continued the war. It wasn’t difficult to do (a “slam-dunk”, said Tenet), given that all the so-called experienced Democrats had already signed on to the war in 1998. The aggressive hostile occupation resulted in 500,000-700,000 more deaths, 4.4 million refugees (roughly half of them outside the country, including most of the country’s Christians, many starving and families selling their daughters in order to eat), escalated by a deliberate policy of “ethnic cleansing” by the General prosecuting the war, walling off entire neighborhoods and towns. This is the same sycophantic General (called an A.K.L.C.S. by his commanding officer) who essentially created Al-Qaeda in Iraq by “losing” $190 in military equipment, much of which was later used to kill and maim U.S. troops.</p>

<p>Brutal honesty says we either require a 100-year strategic presence in that part of the world to advance “U.S.” (read" U.S. corporate) interests, or we do not. Most Democrats and John McCain have essentially embraced the view that it does. The question to be put is whether a candidate not so tainted can construct a viable alternative.</p>

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<p>“I’m more concerned with fixing the growing list of ills in this country than rehashing what happened. Let’s prevent it from happening again.”</p>

<p>How do you keep something from happening again if you don’t have a full understanding of what happened?</p>

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<p>Admittedly I voted for him…post #144. It helps to read what people say if you are going to respond to their comments.</p>

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<p>There is specific act of what occured in this instance and then the broader issue (what I was referring to) about voting for the best interest of the country, not the individual. The one that speaks the truth doesn’t get elected (i’m not suggesting either of the candidates right now fall into the truth category).</p>

<p>I still feel that the dems are not putting forth a viable candidate. They always want to go to the extreme left. At least McCain is somewhat of a renegade and is a moderate republican. That may be his only saving grace.</p>

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<p>Even ONE civilian or military death is too many, but let’s put things into perspective.</p>

<p>Bedhead: “It’s not okay, in my opinion, to brush under the rug all the lies that got us to where we are and not use that experience to inform us about the way out. You can blithely say it was all inevitable. I am not so blithe when it comes to the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.”</p>

<p>Bedhead:” That’s not why we went to war, though. As Paul Wolfowitz says that was the bureaucratic convenience. And even on that point, we didn’t have to fight a war to establish this, or at the very least could’ve waited more time and exercised more care. There was a rush to war.”</p>

<p>Bedhead, the biggest lie of all is the one which tries to make people believe that military deaths under Bush are relatively unwarranted, and that the Iraqi war civilian death total is not a tragic cost of attempting to free Iraq from a daily HELL of even worse civilian mortality and suffering under Hussein.</p>

<p>Here is a point you made in to last day or two elsewhere on CC about US military deaths under Clinton and Bush:</p>

<p>Bedhead:
“Bill Clinton (1993 - 2000) … 7,500 deaths
George W. Bush (2001 - 2006) … 8,792 deaths
Moreover, of the 7,500 fatalities that occurred on Clinton’s watch, only 76 were attributable to hostile action (as compared to 2,596 under Bush); the rest were the result of accidents, homicide, illness, self-inflicted injuries, or unknown causes… If you’re going to lie, why don’t you do it about something less important than the numbers of American lives killed in combat?”</p>

<p>The CRS report for Congress has data which does not match the source I included in my post preceding yours on the other thread, and if the CRS report is accurate, then those numbers were incorrect. “Lie” is not an appropriate term in this situation. </p>

<p>You missed the bigger and more important point: To have waged a significant war in two theaters and to have lost the number of lives which Bush can claim is a significant military achievement. </p>

<p>If you want to give Clinton an excuse for his military death total (which is absurd, as to have that many deaths during peace time could certainly be attributable to managerial incompetence), then by that reasoning the Bush numbers also include deaths attributable to “accidents, homicide, illness, self-inflicted injuries, or unknown causes”. That makes either the total killed in combat even more impressive, or the number of non-combat deaths an evidence of better management. Here is the link for anyone who wishes to review military death totals for various American armed conflicts throughout history (page 5 has a summary table):</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf[/url]”>http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>If the data circulating about Clinton military death totals being greater than Bush’s was false (and I unwittingly passed on bad information), it is unfortunate, as the more significant issue is how well the war has been managed compared to Clinton’s peacetime death totals (and compared to the misrepresentation constantly perpetuated by liberals and the mainstream media).</p>

<p>As for civilian deaths in Iraq, let’s not misrepresent that situation as well:</p>

<p>How Many People Has Saddam Killed?
By John F. Burns
The New York Times | 1/27/2003
“DOING the arithmetic is an imprecise venture. The largest number of deaths attributable to Mr. Hussein’s regime resulted from the war between Iraq and Iran between 1980 and 1988, which was launched by Mr. Hussein. Iraq says its own toll was 500,000, and Iran’s reckoning ranges upward of 300,000. Then there are the casualties in the wake of Iraq’s 1990 occupation of Kuwait. Iraq’s official toll from American bombing in that war is 100,000 — surely a gross exaggeration — but nobody contests that thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were killed in the American campaign to oust Mr. Hussein’s forces from Kuwait. In addition, 1,000 Kuwaitis died during the fighting and occupation in their country.
Casualties from Iraq’s gulag are harder to estimate. Accounts collected by Western human rights groups from Iraqi </p>

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<p>“I still feel that the dems are not putting forth a viable candidate. They always want to go to the extreme left.”</p>

<p>Can you explain what’s extreme left about Obama? Is he for a single-payer health system? Rolling back the Clinton welfare reforms? Guaranteeing a year of government-funded paid leave for all new parents? Establishing government-run day cares available to all working families? Drastically shrinking the military?</p>

<p>Those are the kinds of policies extreme left (by American standards) people want…the kind of policies they have in Western Europe. This is Kucinich type stuff. Does Obama support any of that?</p>

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<p>The fact that he wants to unduly tax the wealthy and play Robin Hood is enough for me. But since you insist…</p>

<p>[NATIONAL</a> JOURNAL: Obama: Most Liberal Senator in 2007 (01/31/2008)](<a href=“http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/]NATIONAL”>http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/)</p>

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<p>Well, as you said, there’s not any point in discussing. You don’t see any option except to ratify, and continue supporting, the people and policies that have driven this country into a ditch over the past 7 years. I can well imagine that you don’t want to see them being held to account or that what they did was mandated by fate. That takes out the thinking part of it all.</p>

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<p>Simple matter of I think we would have been worse off with Kerry. I’m not defending anything that has occurred since Reagan left office…It’s been a cluster ever since. The election is always about the lesser of two evils or the devil you know vs the one you don’t.</p>

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<p>Why don’t you post something educational rather than this cr*p which is tilted to one thing alone – i.e. getting John McCain elected? John McCain claims Obama will enact the largest tax increase in history, pure fiction.</p>

<p>John McCain wants to extend and enhance tax cuts for the wealthiest. Taxes would go down for all a bit, but the greatest benefits would go to the wealthiest.</p>

<p>Obama wants to let the tax cuts for the wealthy lapse – tax cuts which never should have been enacted as we were facing war and heading into huge deficit spending, and he wants to cut taxes for those making under $250,000.</p>

<p>[How</a> McCain and Obama will change your tax bill - Jun. 11, 2008](<a href=“How McCain and Obama will change your tax bill - Jun. 11, 2008”>How McCain and Obama will change your tax bill - Jun. 11, 2008)</p>

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<p>“John McCain wants to extend and enhance tax cuts for the wealthiest. Taxes would go down for all a bit, but the greatest benefits would go to the wealthiest.”</p>

<p>Ah, yes, benefits to the wealthiest. Mr. Jones, from Illinois, who has been working 12 hour days for twenty years building his successful funeral home chain, gets the “benefit” of paying only $475,000 a year in taxes, instead of his previous $550,000 a year. How kind of the government to allow him to keep $75,000 more of his money! </p>

<p>Somehow, even though Mr. Jones has been paying close to half a million in taxes PER YEAR for most of his adult life (compare that to what the average person contributes), liberals feel he should be ashamed to want to keep more of HIS money that HE earned.</p>

<p>Too bad disincentives to the business climate under liberal high tax policies will make Mr. Jones and his company so much less productive, that he will end up paying even less to the hungry government. Then, when he has to cut employees, the government will get even LESS in taxes. When he buys less with his money, other businnes will suffer. And more jobs and taxes will be lost.</p>

<p>Never good to slap the most productive members of society.</p>

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The only thing wrong with this heartstring-tugging little homily is that it’s got no relationship with reality - you know, that thing that happens in the real world, not in the goofy right-wing blogosphere?. We’ve cut taxes to their lowest level in the past 50 years, and, uh - now where was that huge economic upswing that’s supposed to happen? And why is it that some of the times of greatest economic growth in the modern history of our nation have come at times when taxes were higher than they are now? </p>

<p>And, as always, the “pity the poor rich guys” contingent skips over the sticking point, whistling and waving their hands madly: who else are you going to raise taxes on to make up the shortfall? Or are you just going to continue stealing it from future generations by running deficits year after year? I’ve asked that question a half dozen times in the past month and have yet to get an answer.</p>

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<p>“Never good to slap the most productive members of society.” </p>

<p>No but this is overlooked as there is far too much attention paid to the most non-productive members of society. The ones who feel entitled because they live in this great country. This great G** D*** America, to quote someone very close to BO.</p>