<p>^ Are party blog sites (democratic or republican) reliable news sources?</p>
<p>^ Probably as much as the major newspapers. After all, Judith Miller of the NYTimes was all but a member of the Bush communications team during the selling of the Iraq war.</p>
<p>Blumenthal’s relevation that Sadaam’s foreign mininister was a CIA mole is new…and more of less confirmed by the fact that he wasn’t included in the deck of playing cards. However, the overall story that the NIE was cooked is certainly not new. The CIA had numerous sources in the lead up to the war who provided evidence that there was no WMD program. That intelligence was systemicatically omitted from the NIE and hidden from Congress.</p>
<p>“However, the overall story that the NIE was cooked is certainly not new. The CIA had numerous sources in the lead up to the war who provided evidence that there was no WMD program. That intelligence was systemicatically omitted from the NIE and hidden from Congress.”</p>
<p>That is bunk. Show me the report that concludes this. And, by “report” I don’t mean the musings of some left wing blog or some author using anonymous sources. There were several bi-partisan investigations into the intelligence breakdown and none concluded anything close to what you are alleging.</p>
<p>By “bi-partisan reports”, I assume you mean Congressional reports from the Republican controlled Senate and House?</p>
<p>“The CIA had numerous sources in the lead up to the war who provided evidence that there was no WMD program. That intelligence was systemicatically omitted from the NIE and hidden from Congress.”</p>
<p>Actually, far worse than that. The DEMOCRATIC Administration of Clinton and his henchman Tenet produced non-existent evidence in the Big Lie of January 1998 (as a coverup for the genocide) that Iraq’s WMD were an “imminent threat”, resulting in calls by the so-called “experienced” Democrats - Biden, Lieberman, Levin, Gore, Kerry - for immediate military action. And it worked perfectly! After it was revealed that the U.S. was using the U.N. weapons inspections program to place U.S. spies (confirmed by the weapons inspectors themselves), and after the weapons inspectors systematically denied that there was ANY WMD program, Clinton (not Hussein, but Clinton) kicked them out of the country, and, having already killed a million Iraqis (the equivalent of 12 million dead in the U.S.), carpet-bombed Iraq with the largest concentration of bombs since Viet Nam. </p>
<p>Hillary Clinton didn’t have to read the NIE. She likely knew about the first set of lies, and the Democrats having bought them four years earlier, didn’t need any convincing, not with George Tenet still at the helm of the CIA. That’s why selling the new set of lies was a “slam dunk”.</p>
<p>That’s what’s so wonderful about “experienced Democrats”: they know how to “get things done”.</p>
<p>UN weapons inspections timeline Iraq:</p>
<p><a href=“http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2167933.stm[/url]”>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2167933.stm</a></p>
<p>“By “bi-partisan reports”, I assume you mean Congressional reports from the Republican controlled Senate and House?”</p>
<p>Yeah, the ones that were unanimously agreed to by all Democrats involved. Also the report done by the bipartisan Silberman-Robb commission.</p>
<p>Commentary on the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygQVyznw2zE[/url]”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygQVyznw2zE</a>
<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_L0SZiScQ[/url]”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_L0SZiScQ</a></p>
<p>“After it was revealed that the U.S. was using the U.N. weapons inspections program to place U.S. spies (confirmed by the weapons inspectors themselves), and after the weapons inspectors systematically denied that there was ANY WMD program”</p>
<p>This thread is getting filled with unsupported bunk. This was disproven by me within the last two weeks and mini is back at it (but what else is new). If you want to use this crap, at least support it with actual citations.</p>
<p>Edit: In fact, this was used and refuted in this very thread (post 100):</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In fairness (I’m an Independent), not exactly “some author.”</p>
<p>An assistant and senior advisor to the the Clintons.</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Blumenthal[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Blumenthal</a></p>
<p>I think the best light shed on Iraq’s WMD programs is by an examination of all the documents captured when the US invaded Iraq and the testimony and demonstrations provided by all the scientists and military managers in US custody who traded their information for better information, selling out their former comrades in the process.</p>
<p>“This thread is getting filled with unsupported bunk. This was disproven by me within the last two weeks and mini is back at it (but what else is new). If you want to use this crap, at least support it with actual citations.”</p>
<p>I did. Multiple times. With citations. You just don’t bother to read 'em anymore.</p>
<p>You read Ritter. You’ve read him all the way. He admits publicly - he found exactly - zilch. Exactly the same thing the U.S. found after the invasion.</p>
<p>(But when you’ve killed a million people - half of them children - and you are being "charged with genocide by your allies, it isn’t surprising when you do a little dancin’.)</p>
<p>"In 1998, you said Saddam had “not nearly disarmed.” Now you say he doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Why did you change your mind?</p>
<p>I have never given Iraq a clean bill of health! Never! Never! I’ve said that no one has backed up any allegations that Iraq has reconstituted WMD capability with anything that remotely resembles substantive fact. To say that Saddam’s doing it is in total disregard to the fact that if he gets caught he’s a dead man and he knows it. Deterrence has been adequate in the absence of inspectors but this is not a situation that can succeed in the long term. In the long term you have to get inspectors back in.</p>
<p>"Iraq’s borders are porous. Why couldn’t Saddam have obtained the capacity to produce WMD since 1998 when the weapons inspectors left?</p>
<p>I am more aware than any UN official that Iraq has set up covert procurement funds to violate sanctions. This was true in 1997-1998, and I’m sure its true today. Of course Iraq can do this. The question is, has someone found that what Iraq has done goes beyond simple sanctions violations? We have tremendous capabilities to detect any effort by Iraq to obtain prohibited capability. The fact that no one has shown that he has acquired that capability doesn’t necessarily translate into incompetence on the part of the intelligence community. It may mean that he hasn’t done anything."</p>
<hr>
<p>RITTER: No one has substantiated the allegations that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction or is attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And of course that is the reason we have been given for going to war against Iraq – because of the threat posed by these weapons. It has been nothing but rhetorically laced speculation, not hard facts, that have been presented by either the United States or Great Britain to back this up, and until they provide hard facts, there is no case for war.</p>
<p>SWEENEY: But didn’t the United Nations present a report last year saying they believed there were weapons?</p>
<p>RITTER: No, the U.N. presented a report saying they could not account for everything.</p>
<p>SWEENEY: But it is hard to account if you cannot get into the country.</p>
<p>RITTER: That’s right. Then why did the United States pick up the phone in December 1998 and order the inspectors out – let’s remember Saddam Hussein didn’t kick the inspectors out. The U.S. ordered the inspectors out 48 hours before they initiated Operation Desert Fox – military action that didn’t have the support of the U.N. Security Council and which used information gathered by the inspectors, to target Iraq.</p>
<p>SWEENEY: So you are saying that even before this administration came into power, that they were gunning for Iraq?</p>
<p>RITTER: Removing Saddam Hussein has been the policy of every American president since George Herbert Walker Bush.</p>
<p>SWEENEY: Well let’s not go over that in the very short time we have. Let’s ask what you believe the weapons of mass destruction situation is in Iraq at the moment.</p>
<p>RITTER: Well, look: As of December 1998 we had accounted for 90 to 95 percent of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability – “we” being the weapons inspectors. We destroyed all the factories, all of the means of production and we couldn’t account for some of the weaponry, but chemical weapons have a shelf-life of five years. Biological weapons have a shelf-life of three years. To have weapons today, they would have had to rebuild the factories and start the process of producing these weapons since December 1998.</p>
<p>SWEENEY: And how do we know that hasn’t been happening?</p>
<p>RITTER: We don’t, but we cannot go to war on guesswork, hypothesis and speculation. We go to war on hardened fact. So Tony Blair says he has a dossier; present the dossier. George W. Bush and his administration say they know with certainty; show us how you know.</p>
<p>SWEENEY: How much access did you get to the weapons inspection sites?</p>
<p>RITTER: One-hundred percent. Every site we wanted to get to, we eventually got to. There was some obstruction, it wasn’t pretty, but we got there.</p>
<p>SWEENEY: And after what period of time?</p>
<p>RITTER: It depends. A matter of hours sometimes, days sometimes, months, depending on the level of the international crisis. But remember we approached the weapons inspections the way that for instance a forensic crime scene investigator approaches a crime – forensically. And we always uncovered every lie the Iraqis told us. They didn’t get away with anything.</p>
<p>SWEENEY: But when you say you always uncovered every lie that Iraq told you, it means that Iraq didn’t fully cooperate by any stretch of the imagination.</p>
<p>RITTER: I have never said that Iraq was fully co-operating and when I make an assessment about Iraq’s disarmament level, it has nothing to do with what Iraq has declared. I do not trust them, I take nothing they say at face value, it is based upon on the hard work of weapons inspectors who have verified that Iraq has been disarmed through their own independent sources.</p>
<p>–</p>
<p>Reading Tenet on what he has to say about the “slam dunk” is a fun read.</p>
<p>New Washington Post Poll</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/11/AR2007091102003.html?wpisrc=newsletter[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/11/AR2007091102003.html?wpisrc=newsletter</a></p>
<p>Why no response from the right wing on post 258?</p>
<p>Question from post 261…Are party blog sites (democratic or republican) reliable news sources?</p>
<p>No, they are not reliable news sources, but they can be very good information sources.</p>
<p>In order to be fair to others if you post a comment from a news or information source it important to quote the comment correctly and identify the source of any quote clearly. I make this point at this time because, to quote a post from long ago and far away, there are other posters who are often deceptive on these threads, and spout out a lot of things that may not be completely accurate. That is really not fair to the other posters who are looking for information. We know it is true that some posters are often deceptive because they have been in the in the recent past.</p>
<p>mini,</p>
<p>The problem with your Ritter quotes is that:</p>
<p>1) they conflict with Ritter’s own quotes from when he was an inspector - when he presumably knew the situation. </p>
<p>2) they conflict with quotes of other inspectors including that of the UNSCOM director</p>
<p>3) are totally disingenuous regarding the “UN ordering the inspectors to leave” and “100 percent access” to any Iraqi site. The reason the inspectors were removed was that they were NOT given access to the sites that were demanding access to and after exhausting all diplomatic means of getting this access, force was going to be exerted. In fact, the reason Ritter ultimately resigned was that Clinton and the UN were not tougher on Iraq in the inspections process.</p>
<p>4) a little thing happened between Saddam and Ritter after Ritter left his job as an inspector - suddenly and inexplicably Ritter became a Saddam apologist. Perhaps the $400,000 he received from Iraq to make his movie explains this shift? </p>
<p>I’m afraid that if you are using the 21st century Ritter as your source of information, while I’m sure it is convenient for your cause, his testimony is entirely tainted and contradictory.</p>
<p>Yes, yes! Let’s hear about all the vindication of the warmongering view of Iraq’s WMD programs as evidence by all the documents we seized and workers and managers we captured and interrogated after our occupation of Iraq. It will put those weak-kneed Lefties in their place! </p>
<p>Let’s hear it! Let’s hear it!</p>
<p>N.B. It’s a bit of gratifying job security, I’m sure, that the stalwart Bushevik dead-enders have job security for working as either contortionists or cherry-pickers or, if supremely fortunate, cherry-picking contortionists.</p>
<p>Don’cha love the irony of TD calling those who he actively supported for President “warmongers” for their views on Saddam’s WMD program. And, even now is prepared to go to work for yet another warmonger should she win the Dem primary. Love it.</p>
<p>I dont understand what is been said .is FF saying there were WMD in Iraq or is he saying there were no WMD in Iraq but the Bush Administration thought there were WMDs in Iraq…</p>