We must nominate a candidate that will use this, or it's over

quaker bill

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Mon Jan-12-04 08:47 PM
Original message

We must nominate a candidate that will use this, or it's over

Edited on Mon Jan-12-04 08:54 PM by quaker bill

We have the goods on these guys. We have to have a candidate who will pick up this bat and swing for the fence.

http://www.progressive.org/webex04/wx0111b04.html

Here are a few of the findings: "Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled and there was no convincing evidence of its reconstitution."

"Iraqi nerve agents had lost most of their lethality as early as1991." (Italics in original.)

"There was and is no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam's government and Al Qaeda."

"There was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMD to Al Qaeda, and much evidence to counter it."

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And fron the actual report a long but good read, if you have the time

http://wmd.ceip.matrixgroup.net/Iraq3Chap3.pdf

2. Was there reason to believe that Saddam Hussein would turn over unconventional weapons or WMD capability to Al Qaeda or other terrorists?

The president presented this possibility as the ultimate danger and the centerpiece of his case for war. The most strongly worded of many such warnings came in the 2003 State of the Union Speech: “Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans—this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.” In fact, however, there was no positive evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMD or agents to terrorist groups and much evidence to counter it.

Bin Laden and Saddam were known to detest and fear each other, the one for his radical religious beliefs and the other for his aggressively secular rule and persecution of Islamists. Bin Laden labeled the Iraqi ruler an infidel and an apostate, had offered to go to battle against him after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and had frequently called for his overthrow.119 The fact that they were strategic adversaries does not rule out a tactical alliance based on a common antagonism to the United States. However, although there have been periodic meetings between Iraqi and Al Qaeda agents, and visits by Al Qaeda agents to Baghdad, the most intensive searching over the last two years has produced no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam’s government and Al Qaeda.

There were more than words for guidance. Terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna has pointed out that the Iraqi regime had a long history of sponsoring terrorism against Israel, Kuwait, and Iran, providing money and weapons to these groups. Yet over many years Saddam did not transfer chemical, biological, or radiological materials or weapons to any of them “probably because he knew that they could one day be used against his secular regime.”120 In the judgment of U.S. intelligence, a transfer of WMD by Saddam to terrorists was likely only if he were “sufficiently desperate” in the face of an impending invasion. Even then, the NIE concluded, he would likely use his own operatives before terrorists.121

Even without the particular relationship between Saddam and bin Laden, the notion that any government would turn over its principal security assets to people it could not control is highly dubious. States have multiple interests and land, people, and resources to protect. They have a future. Governments that made such a transfer would put themselves at the mercy of groups that have none of these. Terrorists would not even have to use the weapons but merely allow
the transfer to become known to U.S. intelligence to call down the full wrath of the United States on the donor state, thereby opening opportunities for themselves. Moreover, governments with the wherewithal to have acquired such weapons and the ambition to want them used are likely to have their own means of delivering them—through people who take orders. In the 1993 assassination attempt on former president George H. W. Bush, for example, Saddam relied on
his own intelligence operatives. All in all, governments would have little to gain and perhaps everything to lose by giving their WMD to terrorists.

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and more

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/politics/09POWE.html?ex=1074229200&en=0bedf01f1ee25ad3&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no "smoking gun" proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of Al Qaeda.
"I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection," Mr. Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference. "But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."

Mr. Powell's remarks on Thursday were a stark admission that there is no definitive evidence to back up administration statements and insinuations that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, the acknowledged authors of the Sept. 11 attacks. Although President Bush finally acknowledged in September that there was no known connection between Mr. Hussein and the attacks, the impression of a link in the public mind has become widely accepted — and something administration officials have done little to discourage.

<<>> and it just keeps coming

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040119-574809,00.html
But the book is blunt, and in person O'Neill can be even more so. Discussing the case for the Iraq war in an interview with TIME, O'Neill, who sat on the National Security Council, says the focus was on Saddam from the early days of the Administration. He offers the most skeptical view of the case for war ever put forward by a top Administration official. "In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction," he told TIME. "There were allegations and assertions by people.

...

A White House that seems to pick an outcome it wants and then marshal the facts to meet it seems very much like one that might decide to remove Saddam Hussein and then tickle the facts to meet its objective. That's the inescapable conclusion one draws from O'Neill's description of how Saddam was viewed from Day One. Though O'Neill is careful to compliment the cia for always citing the caveats in its findings, he describes a White House poised to overinterpret intelligence. "From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country," he tells Suskind. "And, if we did that, it would solve everything. It was about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President saying, 'Fine. Go find me a way to do this.'"

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We have the information we need to undo these guys and retake the country. We absolutely need a candidate that can pick up this bat and swing it freely to drive these thugs out of Washington.

We can argue tax cuts, education, healthcare, social security and on and on until we are blue in the face. The right solution to any of these issues is debatable. This is why none of our candidates quite agree on the correct approach.

The Iraq stuff is wrong. It is plain and simple, black and white. It was wrong from the start and in every detail. We have the goods on them here. We need a candidate who will use this stuff, every bit of it, as directly and strongly as possible. Do less than this, and it 4 more years.