MORE DAMNING THAN DOWNING STREET

[brettdale]

MORE DAMNING THAN DOWNING STREET

http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2420&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

It’s bad enough that the Bush administration had so little international support for the Iraqi war that their “coalition of the willing” meant the U.S., Britain, and the equivalent of a child’s imaginary friends. It’s even worse that, as the British Downing Street memo confirms, they had so little evidence of real threats that they knew from the start that they were going to have manufacture excuses to go to war. What’s more damning still is that they effectively began this war even before the congressional vote.

[dogday]

1. I had heard they moved funds too

and both are enough to hold Congressional Hearings....

[joemurphy]

3. Misuse of Afghan War Funds

Late July, 2002 – Bob Woodard reports that at the end of July 2002, Gen. Tommy Franks needs $700 million to pay for the military upgrades to airports, pipelines and other infrastructure modifications in Kuwait and elsewhere underway as preparation for war with Iraq. And Bush approves it. But Congress isn’t told. The money is taken from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. …Woodward states: “Some people are going to look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the Treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."

[thegreatwildebeest]

2. Well they don't...

..have to alert Congress for up to 60 days of any military action. This is not to apologize or something like that, but it is an old legal loophole that has basically been used to excuse any sort of small military action since the 60's.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. If all this is true, then it's logical that they had to control the media.

It's the only way they could be sure to get away with it for so long. We know FoxNews was in their camp from the beginning. But the other media outlets? How was the Bush Administration so sure that they were going to get their cooperation?

The media not only went along with questionable elections which ensured Bush would be a two term president, but they conceded the Iraq War as well. Is Judith Miller just one of many media plants which may have been part of something bigger?

[Independent_Liberal]

5. Kick!

[evermind]

6. Yep, as the DSM says, 'US had already begun "spikes of activity"'

As far as I know the paragraph quoting Charlie Clements is the first evidence that civilian targets (a telephone exchange) were hit in the "pre-war" air campaign, before congressional approval for any campaign was given:

Charlie Clements, now head of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, described driving in Iraq months before the war "and a building would just explode, hit by a missile from 30,000 feet –'What is that building?'" Clements would ask. "'Oh, that's a telephone exchange.'" Later, at a conference at Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base, Clements heard a U.S. General boast "that he began taking out assets that could help in resisting an invasion at least six months before war was declared."

Someone should be (and probably is) chasing this up for any future hearings..

This article of Loeb's was originally published in the SF Chronicle, June 19th, BTW: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/19/INGEOD8MJR1.DTL

(edit: replace funny quote signs with normal ones)

[jazzjunkysue]

7. They were moving "assets" from Afghanistan to Iraq way before

the US got serious about invading Iraq. We were going, period.