I need help proving that the war was planned prior to 9/11

[_Jumper_]

Any help would be appreciated. I have circumstantial evidence with PNAC and O'Neill's assertion but I don't have any "smoking gun". Is it true that Wolfowitz admitted that it was planned before 9/11? That is what Bill Press said today.

[mhr]

1. Paul O'Neil's Book, Just Published, States This Fact Clearly

The issue came up the second week of the then new Bush administration.

[_Jumper_]

2. The problem with O'Neill

They brush that off as the rantings of a "disgruntled employee". :eyes:

[Poiuyt]

7. Yes, but facts are facts

Just because he's a disgruntled employee doesn't mean he's not right.

[Dr Fate]

10. But they believed every woman who accused Clinton of harassment...

...it seemed like any gal off the street could come forward with a "Clinton Love child" story and get coverage- yet the media dismisses O'Neil- a top level executive in the White House!!!

Why is that?

[_Jumper_]

12. I agree

It isn't like O'Neill pulled it out the blue. He was there for crying out loud! He has the documents to back him up! I am arguing with people that believe the Holy Trinity is Reagan, Bush II, and Rush. They'll toe the Rush line on O'Neill.

[PaDUer]

22. Remember when POPS

took all the records and put them in his library (for safe keeping!)..That's where the goodies are..and some were also in the WTC, and we know what happened there.

[DoctorMyEyes]

11. Well then they're just stupid

please remind whoever you are trying to convince that the white house has did not deny it. In fact, that's when they started trying to blame Clinton for that too.

[_Jumper_]

15. I will

Thanks

[ComerPerro]

3. Good luck

Are you debating a right winger? And they want ironclad evidence, like someone in the administration admitting it?

No way that will happen.

But tell whatever wingnut you are debating to go get screwed. You don't owe them shit. They never provide evidence, and they get almost as pissed when you ask for evidence as they do when you disprove their rhetoric.

If the ONeil Book and PNAC aren't good enough, then whoever you are debating is obviously a stupid, hopeless Bushbot.

Fuck em.

[_Jumper_]

4. Yeah

Just PNAC and the fact that Shrub's rationale for the war have been debunked should be enough but they want a "smoking gun".

Thanks. I'm going to see what I get from this thread and then take that and what I have and make an overwhelming circumstantial case. If they can't connect the dots then that's their problem.

[DuctapeFatwa]

5. Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs

said Henry Kissinger, in 1973, I think

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/01/1072908854403.html

Probably the best argument is to simply ask the person who has made money. How are Mobil profits since the invasion? How about Shell? Halliburton? How much are they paying for gas?

If they really do not know that the crusade is intended to steal the oil, smile, nod and move slowly backward while pointing to your drink. To continue would be to fire tank shells at an unarmed man.

[_Jumper_]

6. Thanks

I'll take everything and create a case based on the circumstantial evidence, plus O'Neill. If they can't connect the dots then that's their problem but I want to give it a shot.

[alcuno]

8. Here's another thought.

Apparently, Wolfowitz and Armitage went before the Senate in the weeks following 9/11 (2001) to promote the idea of Iraq as a danger. As you said, Woodward's book says that Rummy was talking Iraq within hours of 9/11. If Iraq WAS a gathering, immediate, and yes, imminent threat, why wait an entire year to "roll out a new product?

Talk about Iraq began in the late spring of 2002 yet they didn't present the "urgency" to the American people until August/September of 2002. Forget the pre-9/11 decision. Our government thinks we were in danger and waits A YEAR AND A HALF to deal with it?

[_Jumper_]

13. Thanks

Excellent points!

[leesa]

9. They said they took the Afghanistan and Iraq wars off the shelves

themselves. Both were planned well before 9-11. The Taliban were threatened in July 01 with a "carpet of gold, or a carpet of bombs" if they didn't agree to the terms of the oil pipeline. Several world leaders were aware of the threat. Nais Naik described it in an article in BBC on September 19th 2001. All planned. Had not one thing to do with terrorism.
The whole Afghanistan/Iraq thing has been a scam.

[_Jumper_]

14. Thanks

Do you recall which ones said it?

[Norquist Nemesis]

16. Try this

Your guy will most likely dismiss FTW as not credible, but maybe you can find links to support what it says.
Bush Advisers Planned Iraq War Since 1990s

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100102_bush_advisors.html

Excerpt:
"U.S. military action against Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein has long been a goal of members of the present Bush Administration. The PNAC report was based upon a 1992 draft of the Pentagon's Defense Planning Guidance, which was prepared for then-Defense Secretary Cheney, Wolfowitz and Libby. At the time Libby and Wolfowitz were part of Cheney's policy staff."

[_Jumper_]

17. Thanks

n/t

[pacifictiger]

18. there was someone else

although I cannot remember who at the moment, who said around about the time of 911 that when the bushies took over from clinton they pretty much discounted all the alqaida info and said thanks but no thanks we want to do this our own way, and proceeded to focus on saddam. Perhaps it may have been one of the main guys that had been studying terrorist groups for years in a cnn interview. I'll have to think some more on this.
Edit: I'm assuming you have the documents from the PNAC website that makes the bush courtiers goals crystal clear.

[Norquist Nemesis]

28. Sandy Berger ...I think

Here's a BBC article that quotes Berger:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2172937.stm
"Sandy Berger, national security adviser under Mr Clinton, says he set up a series of 10 briefings by his team for his successor.

quotes Mr Berger as saying he himself attended the one that dealt with the threat to the US by international terrorism "to underscore how important" he believed the issue to be.

"I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject," he is reported to have told Ms Rice."

[nolabels]

19. I have ran across that info a few times in different ways.

It's out there but it does not come up alot on a quick look on search engines. Try looking trough this snip, maybe

http://www.inreview.com/archive/topic/8-12.html
(snip)
Posted by: Fortress46

*AHEM*

Who armed Iraq? Who gave them their capability of WMD's

FACT: The USA.

We shipped them everything from anthrax to class III pathogens.


http://www.gulfwarvets.com/news11.htm

the Secretaries of Commerce and State (George Baldridge and George Shultz) lobbied the NSC (National Security Council) advisor into agreeing to the sale to Iraq of 10 Bell helicopters, officially for crop spraying. It is believed that US-supplied choppers were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village Halabja, which killed 5000 people.


Oh look at that. We don't arm our enemies now do we? Naw, that's silly.
(snip)
lots at that post thru that link on top

[politick]

20. two major documents

Plan for a New American Century, and Defense Planning Guidance. Both written late '90s, by the same people who are now running the show. It's written out pretty clearly. All the same characters, all the same motives, all the right moves. Google those.

Also there's a fascinating article on the latter (DPG) in Harper's, August 2002, I think, and, actually, this article from DU, March of 2002 (which is a pretty good sum up of this all:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/03/26_bad.html

[shimmergal]

21. O'Neill book is fascinating--and damaging.

Even though his outlook is far removed from mine, he seems to be an honorable man who tried his best to keep the country from doing some insane things. He tried to get "triggers" enacted to make the tax cut inoperative if the national debt ballooned too much.

Suskind says other cabinet members and admin. members also talked to him and told him much the same that O'Neill did, only off-the record.
I have some guesses about who might be among them, but of course no way of really knowing.

[JCMach1]

23. Bush basically said he would go after Iraq in the Third

Presidential debate.

http://www.c-span.org/campaign2000/debate2karchives.asp

[ComerPerro]

24. Uh oh

I can see I will be constructing a thread on this tomorrow...

[DaveSZ]

25. testing

:/

[Poiuyt]

33. Yes, it works. Welcome to DU!

[JCMach1]

26. Some quotes from the debates:

3rd debate:

Bush: We can't dictate the terms of peace, which means that we have to
be steady. Can't worry about polls or focus groups. Got to have a
clear vision. That's what a leader does.

A leader also understands that the United States must be strong
to keep the peace. Saddam Hussein still is a threat in the Middle
East. Our coalition against Saddam is unraveling. Sanctions are
loosened. I -- the man who may be developing weapons of mass
destruction, we don't know because inspectors aren't in.

So to answer you question, it requires a clear vision, a
willingness to stand by our friends, and the credibility for people
both friend and foe to understand when America says something, we mean
it.

Second Debate:

BUSH: It's important to be friends with people when you don't need each
other, so that when you do, there's a strong bond of friendship. And
that's going to be particularly important in dealing not only with
situations such as now occurring in Israel, but with Saddam Hussein.
The coalition against Saddam has fallen apart, or it's unraveling,
let's put it that way. The sanctions are being -- are being violated.
There's -- we don't know whether he's developing weapons of mass
destruction. He better not be, or there's going to be a consequence
should I be the president...

MR. LEHRER: -- how you would handle Middle East policy. Is
there any difference?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: I haven't heard a big difference right --
in the last few exchanges.

GOV. BUSH: Well, I think -- it's hard to tell. I think that --
you know, I would hope to be able to convince people I could handle
the Iraqi situation better. I mean, we don't --

MR. LEHRER: With Saddam Hussein, you mean?

GOV. BUSH: Yes, and --

MR. LEHRER: You could get him out of there?

GOV. BUSH: I'd like to, of course, and I presume this
administration would as well. But we don't know -- there's no
inspectors now in Iraq. The coalition that was in place isn't as
strong as it used to be. He is a danger; we don't want him fishing in
troubled waters in the Middle East. And it's going to be hard to --
it's going to be important to rebuild that coalition to keep the
pressure on him.
=============================================================

FROM THE VP DEBATE

MR. SHAW: This question is for you, Mr. Secretary. If Iraq's
president, Saddam Hussein, were found to be developing weapons of mass
destruction, Governor Bush has said he would, quote, "take him out."
Would you agree with such a deadly policy?

MR. CHENEY: We might have no other choice. We'll have to see if
that happens. The thing about Iraq, of course, was at the end of the
war, we had pretty well decimated their military. We had put them
back in the box, so to speak. We had a strong international coalition
arrayed against them, effective economic sanctions, and a very robust
inspection regime that was in place, so that the inspection regime,
under U.N. auspices, was able to do a good job of stripping out the --
the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction, the work that he'd
been doing, that had not been destroyed during the war, and
biological, chemical agents, as well as a nuclear program.

Unfortunately, now we find ourselves in a situation where that's
started to fray on us, where the -- the coalition now no longer is
tied tightly together.

Recently the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, two Gulf states, have
reopened diplomatic relations with Baghdad. The Russians and the
French now are flying commercial airliners back into Baghdad and sort
of thumbing their nose, if you will, at the international sanctions
regime. And of course the U.N. inspectors have been kicked out, and
there's been absolutely no response.

So we're in a situation today where I think our posture vis-a-vis
Iraq is weaker than it was at the end of the war. I think that's
unfortunate. I also think it's unfortunate that we find ourselves in
a position where we don't know for sure what might be transpiring
inside Iraq. I certainly hope he's not regenerating that kind of
capability, but if he were, if in fact Saddam Hussein were taking
steps to either rebuild nuclear capability or weapons of mass
destruction, you'd have to give very serious consideration to military
action to stop that activity. I don't think you can afford to have a
man like Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

[JNelson6563]

27. This essay may help you

http://www.yuricareport.com/PoliticalAnalysis/FraudinWhiteHouse.htm

Very insightful read.

Julie

[Bandit]

29. It was discussed in detail in the Energy meeting at Cheney's office

They want proof just have Cheney release the minutes of those meetings. If it weren't true what possible reason could Cheney have for not releasing them? Open Government. Ya right only under Democrats is government ever open.

[_Jumper_]

30. Thanks all

:yourock:

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[LunaC]

32. This lays it all out

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=976762

[pacifictiger]

34. Here is a link

if you have not seen it to a document that outlines military buildup strategy by pnac people.
http://freedom2008.com/blog/archives/PNAC/PNAC.pdf

Other info can be accessed thru http://pnac.info/

Edit: for a cute illustration on national spending check this one out too http://ww11.e-tractions.com/truemajority/run/oreo?ep=BWUZtTMzMjE3OjAit%2F57

[baldguy]

35. Here ya go: 1998

Look at the names on the bottom. Any of 'em sound familiar?

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

[_Jumper_]

36. Thanks all

:yourock:

[Phil_Jayhan]

37. proof you ask..?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1105963&mesg_id=1105963

cheers~
phil :)

[TrogL]

38. It's a oil war

http://www.angelfire.com/ab/trogl/oilwar