Davids Medienkritik finds the German media spreading yet another lie about the war in Iraq, using misquoted testimony to support an erroneous conclusion. So far the only provable lies in the case about Iraqi WMDs have been on the anti-war side. They claim Bush "lied" about uranium from Africa, then Tony Blair states that indeed British Intelligence did make that claim and Bush’s statement was correct. They argue that David Kelly was trying to throw cold water on the Blair government’s case, then the Hutton Inquest finds that Kelly himself believed Iraq was a threat and the BBC hounded him to his death. They argue that US intelligence somehow knew that Iraq’s WMD program didn’t exist when all available intelligence said that it did, including the intelligence services of France, Iran, Russia, Israel, the Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia as well as others indicated otherwise.
It is quite possible that Bush was wrong about Iraq’s WMD capabilities (and so was the UN for that matter), but that does not at all mean that he lied about it – except to those who viewed regime change in the United States as being preferable to regime change in Iraq.
“They claim Bush “lied” about uranium from Africa, then Tony Blair states that indeed British Intelligence did make that claim and Bush’s statement was correct.”
So stating that somebody else made an incorrect statement that is KNOWN TO BE INCORRECT is okay? Because Joe Wilson was back by the SOTU, and US intelligence knew the Niger claim was false. As I recall, many on the Right–including you, Jay–have been attacking Kerry for delivering his VVAW report on atrocities to the Senate. How is Kerry’s testimony “shameful” when Bush’s misrepresentation of fact in the SOTU is alright? (he lied, but since you for some reason differentiate between a lie of GRATUITOUS omission and a lie of false witness, I’ll be gentler.)
And, just so we’re clear on the scale of the difference between Kerry’s testimony and Bush’s SOTU, Kerry wasn’t fulfilling a Constitutional obligation of his office when he testified. Bush was giving verifiably false information to the Congress of the United States during his mandated address to inform them on the national situation.
In simple terms for those still trying to salvage the credibility of the only president that could (and has) top Clinton: When Jimmy says he didn’t hit Tommy, and you get asked who hit Tommy, saying “Jimmy says he didn’t do it” makes you an accomplice, not honest or accurate.
Bush said, and I quote:
Which indeed, PM Blair said in July was true:
In fact, your argument doesn’t hold water on a prima facie basis. If Bush had been referring to Wilson’s expedition to Niger, he wouldn’t have said so. But he didn’t – he specifically said “The British government”, which last time I checked, did not include Ambassador Wilson.
So the only lie is the one being made by those trying to confuse the issue and smear Bush. Bush was telling the truth in the State of the Union while Kerry was smearing veterans in 1971, accusing them of crimes that not only did not happen, but could not have happened. Trying to draw a parallel between the two does not hold.
Jay, I don’t like to call you slow, but…
-If it wasn’t Niger Bush was talking about, he’d have made it clear.
-Ari Fleischer later confirmed Bush was speaking about the Niger claims.
-Wilson was back in the states, and had already reported the Niger claim was false.
-The British hadn’t seen Wilson’s evidence, and Blair and Bush have BOTH stood by intelligence that was incorrect.
-Bush had technical accuracy behind him, because he only said the British had learned of the plot.
-His silence on US intelligence on the issue, when an intelligence mission had already gone and investigated and reported the claim, is when the lie of omission was committed.
-Bush’s omission of US intelligence on the issue constitutes withholding vital information from the US Congress, compounded by the fact that it was during a speech that is mandated by the Constitution.
-Y’all spent HOW much and HOW long investigating Whitewater and Monica? And how many people died because of those?
Wait, I’m not done implying you’re slow yet!
“Kerry was smearing veterans in 1971, accusing them of crimes that not only did not happen, but could not have happened.”
-Kerry was quoting veterans’ testimony during an investigation conducted by VVAW.
-Kerry accurately reported to the Senate what he had been told by those interviewed.
-Kerry had no mechanism for independent investigation.
-Bush did, and used it, and disregarded the results when they did not fit his purpose.
Savvy?
Than Ari Fleischer was wrong, as the British intelligence was not the same information as the intelligence we had on Niger (Financial Times July 14, 2003) Furthermore, Wilson’s report is not authoritative as by his own admission his “investigation” mainly consisted of him sitting at his hotel and ordering room service while interviewing a few dozen officials and doing no actual investigation into the substance of what he was being told.
Which is irrelevant, as the British information and Wilson’s report were based on entirely different evidence.
Again, Bush said that British Intelligence had found that Hussein had been trying to procure uranium from Africa, which he had done as recently as 1999 and which MI6 still believes.
Amb. Wilson isn’t an intelligence agent, and why he was sent to investigate these claims was beyond me. By his own testimony his little expedition was a waste of time and money, and he did not independent investigation of what he was being told.
He wasn’t referring to the Wilson lead, he was referring to the MI6 lead, which means that he was withholding nothing.
Now who’s slow?
As for your second point:
Yes, he did. He could have easily talked to others in the units of the men he slandered who would have told him they were nowhere near the area Kerry claimed they were. He could have asked the many people who would have told him that there were no orders authorizing the random killing of civilians. It would have taken no more than a few phone calls or letters to people still on the front.
But of course Kerry didn’t want to do that – he was already working with the VVAW in helping reduce morale and force the US to withdrawl, putting the lives of soldiers on the line, not to mention the people who suffered under the bootheel of Communist oppression for years afterwards.
Bush took credit for a failed WMD program and covered up for politically-connected cronies that stole millions in WMD conversion funds. This contradicts any assertion that Bush cares about WMD non-proliferation. Here are the facts and relevant documents:
In his recent speech, Bush said, “We’re helping former Soviet states find productive employment for former weapons scientists.” Bush refers to Defense Enterprise Fund (DEF), a venture capital fund financed by the US Congress. DEF’s task was to convert former Soviet producers of WMD. According to DoD Audit, DEF spent half of its grant on itself, which is twenty five times the industry average. As far as DEF’s investment portfolio of $30M, $20M disappeared from it. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (“DTRA”) maintains a DEF-related webpage. This page used to state that the number of former Soviet WMD scientists converted by DEF to peaceful pursuits was 3370. I questioned this figure in my letters to DTRA, and DTRA reduced this figure to 1250, which is a 66% reduction. But the real figure is no more than 200 Russian scientists. DEF was closed as of December 31, 2003, its entire $67M grant lost. http://nunn-lugar.com/def/
And of course, Bush punished no-one for a destroyed WMD conversion program, except the whistleblower who tried to save it.
Let’s see here, Bush became President on January 21, 2001. The audit highlighted activities that occurred between 1997-1999. So you’re blaming Bush for cancelling a program that was grossly mismanaged during the previous administration. In fact, the report on the problems with the fund were published before the election of 2000, on August 15, 2000.
In other words, you’re accusing Bush of retroactively causing problems that occurred due to Clinton-era mismanagement and then saying he doesn’t care about removing WMDs when he has fully funded CTR programs in Russia above even the Clinton FY2001 budgets and continues to do so in his FY2004 budget.
Ari Fleischer was hte voice of the President–when he speaks he HAS to be speaking for the Administration, else there’s no possible way for the press to do its Constitutionally-protected job.
Wilson was a diplomat with ties that could be exploited, and it was his wife that was the intelligence agent (and none of us were supposed to know that, remember?).
As to whether or not Bush knew that the claim was false:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/25/eveningnews/main560449.shtml
They said don’t: he did. the pertinent section from that story:
“The White House officials responded that a paper issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion: “Iraq has … sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” As long as the statement was attributed to British Intelligence, the White House officials argued, it would be factually accurate. The CIA officials dropped their objections and that’s how it was delivered.
‘“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,”’ Mr. Bush said.
The statement was technically correct, since it accurately reflected the British paper. But the bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true. ”
Funny how your point was directly refuted over six months ago, isn’t it?
And out of sheer morbid curiosity, I wonder where that British report’s information came from…let’s ask the International Herald Tribune/New York Times (http://www.iht.com/articles/102193.html):
“While Bush cited the British report, seemingly giving the account the credibility of coming from a non-American intelligence service, Britain itself relied in part on information provided by the CIA, American and British officials have said.”
The plot thickens! A tautology is afoot!
But Bush would have had to know that the British claim was inaccurate for there to have been wrongdoing? What if I told you the CIA asked that graf be removed from his speech, like Reuters, CBS and other outlets all reported in July? Wouldn’t that be troubling?
And what’s really funny is that even the Aussies got it right and got ignored: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2003/s900341.htm :
“Yet another of Australia’s intelligence agencies has admitted that it knew about American doubts over intelligence on Iraq before the Government joined the Coalition of the Willing.
“First it was the ONA, which answers directly to the Prime Minister, then the Foreign Affairs Department’s intelligence agency ASIS. And today the defence Department’s spy agency, the DIO, has also admitted knowing about the doubts of the Iraqi alleged plans to get uranium from Africa.”
Funny how this all ran last July, and Jay still doesn’t seem to have read any of it.
Finally, in response to: “He wasn’t referring to the Wilson lead, he was referring to the MI6 lead, which means that he was withholding nothing.” You’re still slow. WILSON WASN’T A LEAD: HE WAS INVESTIGATING THE MI6 CLAIM ON THE US’s BEHALF AND SAID IT WAS WRONG! And, in honor of his service to the US by investigating the claim that EVERYONE has admitted was wrong by now, he had his name dragged through the mud, his family’s lives endangered and his wife’s contacts compromised.
You obviously never understood the situation, Jay, because your defense is to say that everyhting we’ve learned in the past 8-10 months about the SOTU being incorrect is itself wrong. You have yet to show how this is the case, and instead simply deny fact. SL-O-W.
And again, your point about Kerry is that he relayed misinformation someone gave him to the Congress, even though he should have known better? See, my point is that Bush relayed misinformation to the Congress, and at least one CIA mission and several analysts had made sure he DID know better. If I accept your criticisms of Kerry, which I don’t, you seem disturbingly hypocritical for not demanding even the SAME level of accuracy from the SITTING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!
The MI6 claim was not solely based off of our intelligence, as the Financial Times reported back in July it had come from two other European intelligence agencies as well (believed to be Italy and France).
Let me make this clear Wilson’s trip had nothing to do with the MI6 information. The MI6 information was from entirely different sources. Ambassador Wilson was not an intelligence agent, and his trip was a waste of time and money. He didn’t do anything to verify the claims that the officials made in Niger, he just asked them if they had been working with Hussein, they said no, and he left it at that. Wilson’s trip was a joke by his own admission.
There still is a strong case that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Africa. We know he had done it before the Gulf War in 1991. We know that Iraqi intelligence agents had been in Africa, as well as Iraqi diplomatic officials. We know that Hussein did have plans to resume a nuclear program once sanctions were lifted. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together.
“Wilson’s trip had nothing to do with the MI6 information. The MI6 information was from entirely different sources. Ambassador Wilson was not an intelligence agent, and his trip was a waste of time and money. He didn’t do anything to verify the claims that the officials made in Niger, he just asked them if they had been working with Hussein, they said no, and he left it at that. Wilson’s trip was a joke by his own admission.”
Bullshit, and I’m calling you on it. Ambassador Wilson’s resume also includes time on the NSC, where he was the director for African affairs–so let’s dispense with the notion that he was unqualified for the trip. Wilson’s trip was based on a question asked by the Vice President during an intelligence briefing that was not satisfactorily answered because of incomplete data.
This is Scooter Libby to Time Magazine:
“”The Vice President heard about the possibility of Iraq trying to acquire uranium from Niger in February 2002. As part of his regular intelligence briefing, the Vice President asked a question about the implication of the report. During the course of a year, the Vice President asked many such questions and the agency responded within a day or two saying that they had reporting suggesting the possibility of such a transaction. But the agency noted that the reporting lacked detail.”
Wilson went to plug holes in the intelligence. The intelligence (found in the British White Paper report, that has since been discredited) said that Iraq was negotiating a trade agreement with Niger concerning urnaium. Wilson went, ascertained that such an agreement could not and had not been negotiated, and returned. The documents that he said were incorrect turned out to be forged.
How could they be forged? Pretty crappily, it would seem: (found this on Lexis-Nexis)
“Elements were missing from crests on letterheads, the signature of Niger’s President was transparently faked and one letter was attributed to a minister who left office in the 1980s. Other errors could be detected with a few minutes’ research on the internet.”
Hmm, crudely faked documents? Surely we didn’t examine such obvious fakes, and instead relied on the word of our close ally, the Brits, right? We’d never fall for anything that blatant, right?:
“A day after Mr Blair spoke, it emerged that documents purporting to show an Iraqi uranium deal with Niger in the 1990s had been received by the US State Department last year, months earlier than had previously been admitted. When copies of the documents were finally handed over to the UN’s nuclear agency, it quickly denounced them as obvious fakes.
“The Bush administration had said it did not see the documents until after 28 January, when the President declared in his State of the Union address that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa. But The Washington Post reported that the State Department distributed copies of the now- discredited documents nearly three months before Mr Bush’s speech. The US waited even longer to share the information with the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), finally handing it over in February.”
Ouch, that looks bad.
Further, to your contention that it ws a completely different claim Bush was citing:
“But Britain, cited in the State of the Union address as the source of the claim, insists it has “separate intelligence” on Iraq’s quest for uranium in Africa. The Government has refused to tell the IAEA what it knows, however, arguing that the information came from a third country, and that it is up to that country to disclose it. But the IAEA says there is no such exemption from Britain’s obligations under UN Security Council resolutions.
Both the content of the “separate intelligence” and its source have been the subject of much speculation. Suggestions in Whitehall last week that the information came from France, the former colonial master of Niger, which still holds a controlling interest in its uranium-mining industry, were strongly denied in Paris.”
From the Independent on Sunday (London), July 20, 2003.
What you’re doing, Jay, is trying to discredit those that disagree with you without making sure you’re the one who is correct. Kind of like Dick Cheney did:
“Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office received the forged evidence in 2002 – before Bush’s State of the Union address on January 28 this year – and passed it to the CIA. The CIA then dispatched former US ambassador Joseph C Wilson to Africa to check out the claim. Wilson came back saying the intelligence was unreliable and the CIA passed Cheney the assessment. Nevertheless, Bush kept the claim in his speech, and Cheney said, just days before the war began in March, that: “We know (Saddam’s) been absolutely trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” He also poured scorn on the IAEA for saying the documents were forged. “I think Mr El Baradei frankly is wrong (The IAEA) has consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don’t have any reason to believe they’re any more valid this time than they’ve been in the past.”
See, right there, Cheney said that the guys who were right all along were wrong. That kind of gives the impression that he wasn’t listening to experts, doesn’t it?
But you don’t care. For some unexplained reason, you don’t seem to mind that we were lied to, that already discredited misinformation was given to the Congress, and that nobody has yet been called to account for crimes that are nothing short of treasonous (leaking Valerie Plame’s job, for example). You seem very comfortable with the fact that you’re completely in the dark. What makes you uncomfortable is that I’d like a little light shed on this.
Jay is right. The British claim was based on a second intelligence source unrelated to the forged documents. Unfortunately, the White House did a horrendous job of pointing this out after the claim of faulty intel was leveled in the press. The British intel was investigated by Britain’s Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee which concluded that it was “reasonable” for the SIS to come to the conclusion it did.
The Committee’s report is here in PDF format:
http://www.cabinet office.gov.uk/reports/isc/pdf/iwmdia.pdf
The pertinent info is in points #’d 89-93.
And claims made by the French, who have been less than upstanding throughout the Iraq saga and were being bought off left and right by Hussein, that they weren’t the original source of the Niger/uranium intel mean nothing.
1-france has no tighter connection with Irak than the US did (which is clearly not an excuse, but for the sake of fairness, I cannot let you say one thing if you’re hiding the other part). the list recently disclosed have shown ONE corrupt french officer, which was the minister of defense in charge of Gulf War I…I tend to believe the corruption was either not effective, or invented, because this guy led the war against saddam (Mr.Pasqua is his name). It’s not impossible that this guy took some money (as he did in other affairs), but it could turn out that he didn’t. No american name in the list makes me really wonder…oh wait, the americans found it…
2-About the forged uranium papers. Americans gave evidences to the UN, and these were fakes. I don’t give a damn knowing where it came from, which office validated it, on what date… Any excuse won’t do here. Now that this fake has been considered as such, why isn’t anyone trying to find out who made this fake? Who had an interest in proving that Saddam was a bad man that should be removed from power by the world community?
Bullshit. Last time I checked, the Iraqis were flying Mirages and MiGs rather than F-16s. Last time I checked the US had no arms sales to the Iraqis for decades, while the French were selling Saddam arms right up until the day he invaded Kuwait.
Furthermore, if you’d read the Iraqi Oil Ministry documents, (which were found by the Iraqis themselves, not the Americans) you’d see that there were several French officials names as well as two Arab-Americans. (One of whom was the person who bankrolled Scott Ritter’s propaganda campaign.)
France gave Iraq nuclear technology in the 1980s (or have you forgotten that Israel saved the world from Saddam having nuclear weapons thanks to the Osiraq strike?), sold Iraq warplanes for years, and provided Iraq with a wide range of military hardware.
And what did the US give Iraq? Farm equipment and chemicals. Some of the farm chemicals could have been used as precursor agents for chemical weapons, but there’s no evidence that is what they were used for.
But feel free to believe whatever convenient lie is shoved down your throat by your government…
You have just no idea Jay: Planes were sold witout replacement parts, and radars (for example) were sold without guide booklet. They just couldn’t use whatever they bought? You don’t believe me? Read some more. Saddam was so disconnected he used to receive scientists from accross the world. They presented him a new laser that could burn the sky, or a missile that could go around earth in 20 minutes, and he bought it all. In the end, it took 15 days and 50 deaths to defeat his entire army and take over his country. He was so scary to his own adisers (just like Hitler), that no one would have dare telling him the truth.
About the nuclear facility, I hope you make the difference between civilian and military use, don’t you? I hope you know a nuclear power plant cannot be turned into anything useful for bombs, don’t you?
On the other hand, it seems that the farm chemicals are working well.
Finally, I don’t live in France, I don’t listen to french news, and I hate the actual government of France (except for their commitment to law and democracy on the world stage).
Go back to Foxnews, your very objective source of information, so that you can teach us about all the amazing stuff they brainwash you with!
“Last time I checked the US had no arms sales to the Iraqis for decades”
Why buy the cow when the CIA gives you the Iranian-killing milk for free? Wasn’t that…yeah, wasn’t that Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam’s hand in that lovely photo? That must have been from DECADES before the Kuwait invasion, right?
And, in case we missed the news the other day, Vincent may in fact be wrong about one point:
“Americans gave evidences to the UN, and these were fakes.”
We gave SOME evidence to the UN. Those sites we knew were housing WMDs (this was pre-“WMD programs”), yeah, we never, um, actually told the UN inspectors where they were. At least we withheld a hell of a lot of sites. So, when we said the inspectors had had their time and failed to find what the intel said was there….
Hell, it’s not like Bush was going to get my vote anyway. But my next door neighbor isn’t voting for him, though he did in 2000, and we’re in Florida, so shine on you crazy diamond!