Major Contradiction in Bush's Speech

[FinnMacCool]

He admitted his intelligence was flawed

And he said the war was justified.

Is that not a contradiction?

 

[cnredd]

He admitted his intelligence was flawed

And he said the war was justified.

Is that not a contradiction?

Only for people ignorant enough to believe that the war was based solely on flawed intelligence...

 

[Binary_Digit]

For me, that "flawed intelligence" is what origionally sold me on the war. I watched Colin Powell tell the UN how much sarin gas Iraq has stockpiled, where the mobile weapons factories are, and how Iraq is "harboring" the al'Qaeda splinter group Ansar al-Islam. I listened to Condi Rice tell about uranium centrifuge tubes that could "pretty much only be used for nuclear enrichment." I listened to the President assert that Iraq has trained al'Qaeda in bomb making and poison gases. It was a strong case for me, and at the time I fully supported the war. But it turns out, none of the above assertions were true at all, and some of our intelligence people at the time were trying to tell the President exactly that.

War was based on the idea that Iraq was a "threat." Intelligence, both then and now, shows that Iraq was not nearly the "threat" it was made out to be. They didn't have "stockpiles" of WMDs, they weren't harboring al'Qaeda, and they didn't have ambitions to commit or help to commit terrorist attacks against the U.S.

Everyone knows Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds 20 years ago. Everyone knows he played shady games with the weapons inspectors for 12 years. Everyone knows he repeatedly violated UN resolutions. If these had been the rationale for war, nobody could argue that the President misled anyone to war. Instead, we got corrupt intelligence from the equally-shady Office of Special Planning, created by Bush specifically to find links between Iraq and terrorism. Is it any wonder why so much intelligence from the OSP turned out to be wrong? Bush took a biased approach on Iraq, so he didn't come to an objective conclusion.

If Hussein's Iraq was part of the broader war on terrorism, that's fine, but I really don't think a good case based on truth has been made.

 

[shuamort]

“My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power,” the president said.


The reason we went into Iraq was because they failed to disarm their WMDs before the deadline.

The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime's own actions -- its history of aggression, and its drive toward an arsenal of terror. Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.


First, some ask why Iraq is different from other countries or regimes that also have terrible weapons. While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone -- because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States.


The time for denying, deceiving, and delaying has come to an end. Saddam Hussein must disarm himself -- or, for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.

There is no easy or risk-free course of action. Some have argued we should wait -- and that's an option. In my view, it's the riskiest of all options, because the longer we wait, the stronger and bolder Saddam Hussein will become. We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I'm convinced that is a hope against all evidence.

For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war. That regime pledged to reveal and destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

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.

It is too late for Saddam Hussein to remain in power. It is not too late for the Iraqi military to act with honor and protect your country by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction.

The United States came to the United Nations and laid down a clear-cut case for war: it detailed:

* Hiding equipment
* Thwarting inspections
* Access to scientists
* Biological weapons
* Chemical weapons
* Nuclear weapons
* Prohibited arms systems
* Ties to al Qaeda


So, it sure looks like the reason to me was to go in and disarm Saddam from these WMDs that turned up to be non-existant. These WMDs which were the immediate threat to the US. The coalescence to the fact that there are no WMDs and that the info was faulty would therefore mean that the threat that we went in there for never existed.

 

[Binary_Digit]

The coalescence to the fact that there are no WMDs and that the info was faulty would therefore mean that the threat that we went in there for never existed.

Yes, or at least it wasn't nearly as big as we thought. There have been a token few chemical and biological weapons found, but nothing that constitutes such a threat as was described to us.

 

[Iriemon]

Only for people ignorant enough to believe that the war was based solely on flawed intelligence...

LOL! Good point. No, we don't think that. We know it was based on the intentionally flawed use and misrepresentation of intellegence.

 

[Iriemon]

“My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power,” the president said.


The reason we went into Iraq was because they failed to disarm their WMDs before the deadline.

The United States came to the United Nations and laid down a clear-cut case for war: it detailed:

* Hiding equipment
* Thwarting inspections
* Access to scientists
* Biological weapons
* Chemical weapons
* Nuclear weapons
* Prohibited arms systems
* Ties to al Qaeda


So, it sure looks like the reason to me was to go in and disarm Saddam from these WMDs that turned up to be non-existant. These WMDs which were the immediate threat to the US. The coalescence to the fact that there are no WMDs and that the info was faulty would therefore mean that the threat that we went in there for never existed.

When you get right down to it, the entire premise that Saddam had WMDs was the fact that he possessed them in the 80s (when the Reagan and Bush administration approved his purchase of them) and that Hussein didn't prove, to our satisfaction, that the weapons were destroyed or non-existent. The Iraqis denied having them, but their statements were not accepted. The only other basis for a believe were statements made by captured prisoners or Iraqi ex-pats, both of whom would have plenty of reason to have bias.

That alone should have been a reason to question the accuracy of the proposition. Then in 2002, when the inspectors went in, and looked in the places where the informants said the WMDs were, again and again they found no trace of it.

Any objective use of the intellegence should have put up red flags about the reliability of the informants and raised questions about the accuracy of the proposition.

But the Bush Admin and its neocon element had already made up their mind to invade Iraq. So they misrepresented the facts, and distorted Iraq's ties to terrorists, and demonized Hussein. When the evidence started indicating they had been deluding themselves about Iraq's threat, they rushed to war. Not because Iraq represented a real threat to the US or anybody, but because if the inspections continued, they would more and more verify that Iraq in fact did not have WMDs, and they would lose their justification for invading. They knew the public would not by the excuse of setting up a democracy as a justification to go to war.

 

[FinnMacCool]

Only for people ignorant enough to believe that the war was based solely on flawed intelligence...

Well its certainly the one case that the Bush admin was really pushing on the american people. That and its link to terrorism, which was a lie.

 

[KCConservative]

For me, that "flawed intelligence" is what origionally sold me on the war. I watched Colin Powell tell the UN how much sarin gas Iraq has stockpiled, where the mobile weapons factories are, and how Iraq is "harboring" the al'Qaeda splinter group Ansar al-Islam. I listened to Condi Rice tell about uranium centrifuge tubes that could "pretty much only be used for nuclear enrichment." I listened to the President assert that Iraq has trained al'Qaeda in bomb making and poison gases. It was a strong case for me, and at the time I fully supported the war. But it turns out, none of the above assertions were true at all, and some of our intelligence people at the time were trying to tell the President exactly that.

War was based on the idea that Iraq was a "threat." Intelligence, both then and now, shows that Iraq was not nearly the "threat" it was made out to be. They didn't have "stockpiles" of WMDs, they weren't harboring al'Qaeda, and they didn't have ambitions to commit or help to commit terrorist attacks against the U.S.

Everyone knows Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds 20 years ago. Everyone knows he played shady games with the weapons inspectors for 12 years. Everyone knows he repeatedly violated UN resolutions. If these had been the rationale for war, nobody could argue that the President misled anyone to war. Instead, we got corrupt intelligence from the equally-shady Office of Special Planning, created by Bush specifically to find links between Iraq and terrorism. Is it any wonder why so much intelligence from the OSP turned out to be wrong? Bush took a biased approach on Iraq, so he didn't come to an objective conclusion.

If Hussein's Iraq was part of the broader war on terrorism, that's fine, but I really don't think a good case based on truth has been made.

What is clear is that you want all of these wild accusations to be true so that your party can regain power - the good people of Iraq and our troops be damned. How sad.

 

[M14 Shooter]

LOL! Good point. No, we don't think that. We know it was based on the intentionally flawed use and misrepresentation of intellegence.

Really.

So for this to be true, yuou have to show that Bush knew the information he had was wrong, and that he deliberatly disseminated it to the public.

Good luck with that.

Clinton lied - people died.

 

[Binary_Digit]

So for this to be true, yuou have to show that Bush knew the information he had was wrong, and that he deliberatly disseminated it to the public.

Been there done that.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/showthread.php?t=6425

CONGRESS DID NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THE SAME INTELLIGENCE TEAM BUSH HAD


Example 1:
Presidential Daily Briefs.

Example 2:
Team Bush began making claims about the Iraqi threat several months before Congress received any substantial, updated intelligence analysis.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200511080006

Example 3:
Team Bush received information directly from alternative intelligence sources, specifically the since-discredited Office of Special Plans and Iraqi National Congress. The CIA and the State Department were highly skeptical of the intelligence provided by these agencies, yet the information was used by Team Bush to sell the war anyway.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...999737,00.html


TEAM BUSH KNOWINGLY EXAGGERATED THE LINK BETWEEN AL'QAEDA AND IRAQ

Example 1:
Dick Cheney told NBC's Meet the Press that Mohammed Atta's trip to Prague was "pretty well confirmed."

RUSSERT: Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?
CHENEY: Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that's been pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresid...p20011209.html

The CIA, FBI, and the Czeck government have questioned the report's credibility from the beginning. Cheney denied his own words on CNBC's Capital Report:

BORGER: Well, let's get to Mohammad Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, "pretty well confirmed."
CHENEY: No, I never said that.
BORGER: OK.
CHENEY: Never said that.
BORGER: I think that is...
CHENEY: Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down.
BORGER: Well, now this report says it didn't happen.
CHENEY: No. This report says they haven't found any evidence.
BORGER: That it happened.
CHENEY: Right.
BORGER: But you haven't found the evidence that it happened either, have you?
CHENEY: No. All we have is that one report from the Czechs. We just don't know.

http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/...404_flash3.htm

Example 2:
The 9/11 Commission Report found "no collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al'Qaeda. When the New York Times reported that there was a fundamental split between the Commission and the President, Dick Cheney called the article "outrageous," but then went on to confirm that there is a split between the Commission and the President:

BORGER: But you say you disagree with the commission...
CHENEY:CHENEY: On this question of whether or not there was a general relationship.
BORGER: Yes.
CHENEY: Yeah.
BORGER: And they say that there was not one forged and you were saying yes, that there was. Do you know things that the commission does not know?
CHENEY: Probably.
BORGER: And do you think the commission needs to know them?
CHENEY: I don't have any--I don't know what they know. I do know they didn't talk with any original sources on this subject that say that in their report.
BORGER: They did talk with people who had interrogated sources.
CHENEY: Right.
BORGER: So they do have good sources.
CHENEY: Gloria, the notion that there is no relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida just simply is not true.

Directly contradicting the 9/11 Commission Report, President Bush himself has said "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/17/Bush.alqaeda/

Sounds like Team Bush has information the 9/11 Commission doesn't. Just as quickly, however, a spokesman also said the administration "cooperated fully with the commission," and "the president wants the commission to have the information it needs to do its job." Yeah, right.

Example 3:
In June 2004, Dick Cheney said evidence of a link was "overwhelming."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...iraq.al.qaeda/

About that time, bin Laden was denouncing Hussein's Baath party as "infedels." Some collaborative link.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/...aq.Qaeda.link/

Example 4:
Bush said in an October 2002 speech, "Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."

But the individual who made this claim has retracted it. Since his capture sparked the first debates among the U.S. government over the harsh treatment of prisoners, this allegation was probably made while he was being tortured.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Jul31.html

Just about every intelligence agency in the world contends that bin Laden and Sadaam Hussein don't trust each other, and don't even like each other. The only thing they have in common is their resent of America, and even that is for different reasons.


TEAM BUSH KNOWINGLY EXAGGERATED THE THREAT POSED BY IRAQ


Example 1:
The supposed Iraqi defector named "Curveball" told German intelligence agencies about mobile chemical weapons factories in Iraq. German officials said that they had warned American colleagues well before the Iraq war that Curveball's information was not credible - but the warning was ignored. Colin Powell told the UN that the information came from a "solid source."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...184172,00.html

The U.S. has since admitted that Curveball's information was total bullshit.

Example 2:
Condoleeza Rice repeatedly warned about the dangers of waiting for a "smoking gun" to evolve into a "mushroom cloud." But in 2002, CIA director George Tenent told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the probability of Sadaam Hussein initiating an attack on the U.S. was low.

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2002/10/dci100702.html

Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief nuclear inspector, told the U.N. Security Council in January 2003 that they still have no "smoking gun" and need more time, perhaps months, to complete their inspections. Obviously they were denied this request and removed by the U.S. two months later.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/10/wbr.smoking.gun/

Example 3:
Colin Powell told the UN, "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants." and, "When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq."

The training camp is run by a dissident Kurdish Islamic militant group called Ansar al-Islam. This group does have connections to al'Qaeda, but they are utterly opposed to the Iraqi regime under Hussein and has no connection to it whatsoever.

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Ant...ral_Powell.htm

Example 4:
Bush said in October 2002, "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist or individual terrorists"

But declassified portions of a National Intelligence Estimate released by the White House show that at the time of the president's speech, the U.S. intelligence community judged that possibility to be unlikely.

In fact, the estimate shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al'Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his regime were collapsing after a military attack by the United States.

"Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al'Qaeda, . . . already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States, could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct," said one key judgment of the estimate. It went on to say that Hussein might decide to take the "extreme step" of assisting al Qaeda in a terrorist attack against the United States if it "would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...1/MN105561.DTL

 

[Stace]

My main problem with Bush trying to justify the war in Iraq?

...but most theologians agree that to qualify as "just" in the eyes of God and man, a war must meet the following tests:

1. There must be a just cause for the war. It must be waged only in response to certain, grave, and lasting damage inflicted by an aggressor. Revenge, revolt, or a desire to harm, dominate, or exploit is not sufficient justification for war.
2. A just war can be waged only as a last resort. every possible means of peacefully settling the conflict must be exhausted first.
3. The ultimate objective of war must be to bring peace. And the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed had the war not been fought.
4. There must be serious prospect of success; bloodshed without hope of victory cannot be justified.
5. The war must be declared by a legitimate authority; no private individuals or groups can launch a war.
6. The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. The war must not cause greater evil than the evil to be eliminated.
7. Noncombatants must not be intentionally harmed. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.
8. Prisoners and conquered peoples must be treated justly.

First of all, this list is also published elsewhere, the book just happened to be where I got it from.

So, let's go through this....

1. Iraq did not attack us first. End of story.

2. I don't think this was a last resort. Many at the U.N. wanted more time to conduct the weapons inspections. Bush said no.

3. Ok, yes, we're trying to improve Iraq, but....using that crap about Saddam gassing the Kurds is just that, crap. That was 20 years ago. I don't think they were really having any more problems with "peace" than any other country....and the "peace established after the war" has yet to be seen....I don't think we'll see any effects of that for many more years.

4. As far as the War on Terror angle, there is no real hope for success....terrorism will never be completely eradicated. Future terrorists are being born every day.

5. Ok, I guess we have this one covered.....

6. I really don't think we have a good proportion here. Thirty thousand dead Iraqis in three years is not good. Yeah, sure, Saddam wiped out 180,000 Kurds, and that's not cool either, but...For what we're supposed to be there to do, 30,000 is an insanely high number.

7. We're not really following through here, either. Prisoners of war are considered noncombatants, and well, we all know what happened there.

8. See above.