Where's the Outrage? - "systematically misrepresented the threat.."

[Q]

Published on Monday, January 12, 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle

Where's the Outrage?

by Ruth Rosen

THE RESPECTED and nonpartisan Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington released on Jan. 8 a long-awaited study whose major conclusion is that the Bush administration "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons programs. Three leading nonproliferation experts -- Jessica T. Mathews, Joseph Cirincione and George Perkovich -- authored the study, which is based on comparisons of declassified U.S intelligence documents with U.N. weapons inspections reports and Bush administration statements.

Although the authors agree that Iraq's weapons programs potentially constituted a long-term threat, they argue that they did not "pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the region or to global security." The U.N. inspections, they also conclude, worked far better than realized and proved to be more reliable than American intelligence. The Carnegie report says that Bush administration officials misrepresented Iraq's threat in three specific ways.

First, they lumped together the threat posed by nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, even though there was no serious evidence of nuclear weapons.

Second, they told the American public that Saddam Hussein would give WMD to terrorists, for which there was no evidence.

Third, administration officials omitted "caveats, probabilities and expressions of uncertainty present in intelligence assessments" from their public statements.

In other words, officials used a "worse case" scenario that was not based on actual intelligence.

In early 2002, according to the Carnegie report, the U.S. intelligence community possessed an accurate assessment of Iraq's weapons programs. Soon afterward, a "dramatic shift" occurred as "the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policy-makers' views." This change coincided with the creation of a separate intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, in the Pentagon. The Carnegie report -- a serious indictment of the Bush administration's credibility -- instantly became the lead story on the British Broadcasting Corporation report and front-page news in newspapers around the world.

Not so in the United States.

Continues: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0112-02.htm

[Q]

1. More specifically:

- Where is the outrage from the Democrats? Isn't it their duty to protect and defend the Constitution? How can it be that a 'president' is able to lie this nation into war and get away with it?

[Cleita]

2. Hasn't this been a pattern with our leadership?

They actually seem to be helping the Bush people sweep these things under the rug by ignoring them.

[Q]

5. I'm at a loss here...

...because the Dems have more evidence against Bush* than was found against Nixon. Yet...they refuse to use it against him or to call for hearings and investigations.

- It's actually PART of their job to provide checks and balances of the executive branch.

- And I refuse to accept that because Dems are in the minority that they can't at least make sure these issues don't go away.

[Toots]

3. Stories such as this need to be sent to all candidates

and every member of Congress. If for no other reason than to let them know We read them. Make them wonder how many more people like us have read them. I remember a long time ago before our real president invented the INTERNET politicians had some sort of formula telling them how many people were represented by a single letter. Something like a letter was worth a hundred other folks who felt the same only wouldn't bother to write. You never know what may go through their heads trying to digest this type of info. Heaven knows most major media sources won't print this stuff.

[Q]

12. This is an impeachable offense if there ever was one...

...but why are the Dems being so shy about this?

[cthrumatrix]

4. Note to America -- this is a chance to end tyranny....your media is AWOL

just like shrub was

[Q]

6. Forget O'Neill....

...there are many other sources that PROVE that the Bushies simply invented a reason to invade and occupy Iraq. It doesn't matter WHEN they planned it. The fact is they carried it out using lies and deceit...the end result being the unnecessary deaths of thousands of INNOCENT Iraqis and hundreds of US soldiers.

[Philosophy]

7. Who cares? We won the war: "Mission Accomplished"

That's all anyone cares about. :evilfrown:

[Q]

10. That's what the Bush*Media will tell you...

...after they do a few polls and the talking head pundits do their Sunday shows. But the rule of law says that it doesn't matter if anyone 'cares'.

- Where are the 'rule of law' advocates that impeached Clinton for lying about a blowjob? I know where they are: they're hiding now that one of their own is in trouble.

- And what about the Democrats? They have a duty and responsibility to make sure the laws are enforced. Is Bush* and Gang exempt from the same laws everyone else has to obey?

[Stephanie]

8. "mushroom cloud, mushroom cloud, mushroom cloud"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39500-2003Aug9?language=printer

In an interview with the New York Times published Sept. 6, Card did not mention the WHIG but hinted at its mission. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," he said.

<snip>The day after publication of Card's marketing remark, Bush and nearly all his top advisers began to talk about the dangers of an Iraqi nuclear bomb.

Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair conferred at Camp David that Saturday, Sept. 7, and they each described alarming new evidence. Blair said proof that the threat is real came in "the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites." Bush said "a report came out of the . . . IAEA, that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."

http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/08/iraq.debate/

Rice acknowledged that "there will always be some uncertainty" in determining how close Iraq may be to obtaining a nuclear weapon but said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. - G. Bush, 10/7/02


http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/6068775.htm
Looting of Iraqi nuclear facility indicts U.S. goals
If we feared the loss of radioactive materials, why not guard them?
TRUDY RUBIN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Posted on Thu, Jun. 12, 2003

<snip>The administration knew full well what was stored at Tuwaitha. So how is it possible that the U.S. military failed to secure the nuclear facility until weeks after the war started? This left looters free to ransack the barrels, dump their contents, and sell them to villagers for storage.

How is it possible that, according to Iraqi nuclear scientists, looters are still stealing radioactive isotopes? The Tuwaitha story makes a mockery of the administration's vaunted concern with weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. military hastened to secure the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad from looters. But Iraq's main nuclear facility was apparently not important enough to get similar protection.

<snip>And why, in facilities other than Location C, is the looting apparently continuing? Hisham Abdel Malik, a Iraqi nuclear scientist who lives near Tuwaitha and has been inside the complex, told me that in buildings "where there are radioactive isotopes, there is looting every day." He says the isotopes, which are in bright silver containers, "are sold in the black market or kept in homes." According to IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming, such radioactive sources can kill on contact or pollute whole neighborhoods.

How could an administration that had hyped the danger of Saddam handing off nuclear materials to terrorists let Tuwaitha be looted? Maybe the hype was just hype ... or maybe the Pentagon didn't send enough troops to Iraq to do the job right.

Either answer is damning.<more>

http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20030716_192.html
U.N. in Dark About Looted Iraq Dirty Bomb Material
July 16
By Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said Wednesday it had accounted for most of the low-grade uranium lost during looting at Iraq's main nuclear facility, but had no information about more dangerous radioactive material.

<snip>But an IAEA spokeswoman said the agency had not been permitted by U.S. occupation authorities to check the status of Tuwaitha's stocks of highly-radioactive cesium-137, cobalt-160 and other materials which could be used in dirty bombs.

"There were around 400 of these radioactive sources stored at Tuwaitha," IAEA's Melissa Fleming said.

Witnesses have said that villagers near Tuwaitha, especially children, have shown symptoms of radiation sickness.

"Any case of radiation sickness would probably be from these highly-radioactive sources, not from the low-grade natural uranium at Location C," Fleming said.<more>

http://www.counterpunch.org/schwarz07172003.html
July 17, 2003
Bush's Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine
The Bane of Non-Proliferation Watchdogs
By MARTIN SCHWARZ

<snip>Bush's use of the specter of nuclear threat to legitimate his intimidation policy can also been seen as just another excuse if reports from occupied post-war Iraq are taken into account. When the reports about massive looting in Iraq's biggest nuclear facility Al-Tuwaitha emerged after the war, the U.S. administration rejected the IAEA's request to send inspectors to that facility for more than a month. El-Baradei didn't even get an answer to his letters to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Meanwhile, strange things must have happened in Al-Tuwaitha: The IAEA in Vienna received several phone calls from U.S. soldiers based at the facility to secure it, who didn't know what to do with nuclear material they had found.<more>


http://www.sierrasun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030718/OPINION/307180301
July 18, 2003
Bush's actions don't match the rhetoric
Guest Column by Kirk Caraway

<snip>Turn back the clock to the before the war. You "know" your enemy has 100-500 tons of chemical weapons, and you know where he is likely hiding them. Wouldn't you try to secure those sites as quickly as possible? After all, these chemical weapons posed a major threat to our advancing troops, and the big danger, they said, was if these fall into the hands of terrorists.

So why wasn't this done? Special Forces teams were flown into Iraq to secure the oil fields, but not the weapons. That speaks volumes about what the real reason for the war is.

And those weapons are still missing. Rumsfeld claims they are doing their best to search all those sites, but this is disconcerting. How many days have his 150,000 soldiers had to search the sites they already know about?

And what about the nukes? If Bush and his people really thought that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, why did the military wait for more than a week after taking over the region to even visit the country's main nuclear research facilities at Tuwaitha?

Why did they wait even longer to visit the neighboring Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility? Both sites were heavily looted, so if there were plans for a nuclear bomb or even some weapons-grade material, it would be long gone by now.<more>

[Stephanie]

9. Then there's the report from the Army War College

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/01/12/us_effort_to_combat_terrorism_criticized/

US effort to combat terrorism criticized
War College educator deems Iraq a detour
By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, 1/12/2004

WASHINGTON -- A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an "unnecessary" war in Iraq and pursuing an "unrealistic" quest against terrorism that may lead to US wars with states that pose no serious threat.

The report, by visiting professor Jeffrey Record, who is on the faculty of the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, warns that as a result of those actions, the Army is "near the breaking point." It recommends, among other things, scaling back the scope of the "global war on terrorism" and instead focusing on the narrower threat posed by the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

"The global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious, and accordingly . . . its parameters should be readjusted," Record writes.

The antiterrorism campaign "is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate US military resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security," he added.<more>

[Q]

11. This is the ARMY WAR COLLEGE for hell sakes!

...and even they call this an 'unnecessary war'.

- In case some out there don't understand what this means: Bush* is directly responsible for the UNNECESSARY death of thousands.

[ElementaryPenguin]

13. The lack of reaction from the American public is something I will

NEVER forget for all my days!! It is a fucking incredible disgrace!!