[osiris]

Originally Posted by spacefreak

Nope. Yellowcake was recovered in Iraq. A buried, dissassembled centrifuge was recovered in Iraq. And recently translated documents show an ongoing relationship between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda. All are FACTS.

So the best you can do to rebut this is to link to articles about Galloway and oil-for-food? Nice try.

the documents were forgeries. why do you insist on lying?

[osiris]

Originally Posted by spacefreak

So the best you can do to rebut this is to link to articles about Galloway and oil-for-food? Nice try.

Galloway testified on many subjects, including the alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda link:

"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies."

[mojo2]

It makes no difference that there were no WMD's found yet. There may be some yet to be found but even if there aren't the invasion was still justified based on the reasonable belief that they existed and that Iraqi regime change was our nation's official policy since Clinton signed the paper in 1998, I think.

[Troll]

Originally Posted by mojo2

... the reasonable belief that they existed ...

In a court, reasonableness is tested against the actions of a peer in the same position as the person accused of being unreasonable. That is, an action is only reasonable if someone in the same position as Bush would have acted in the same way. That's not a hypothetical question because there were hundreds of leaders in the same position as Bush. The vast majority of the leaders on the planet told Bush that his "evidence" was hogwash, that is was not reasonable to start killing tens of thousands of people and they specifically rejected the course of action that Bush adopted.

Bush's belief that Iraq had WMD was clearly NOT reasonable because no one else reacted to the information the way he did. What's more, Bush never presented his belief as being reasonable. Bush did everything in his power NOT to come across as a calculated, reasonable, straight-thinking person. He wanted the American people to think that he was a bold leader, prepared to do things that reasonable leaders were not prepared to. Iraq was a massive gamble by an unreasonable person. If there had been nukes in Tikrit, he would have been a hero and heroes are normally not reasonable people. Thing is when you act boldly and turn out to be wrong, you just look like a dunce. Which is why this President has the lowest rating of any President not to be impeached.

[spacefreak]

Originally Posted by osiris

the documents were forgeries. why do you insist on lying?

You've got nothing but an agenda that requires you to constantly deny fact and reject logic. Besides, only a moron would use articles from 2003 to contradict documents translated in March and April of 2006.

[osiris]

Originally Posted by spacefreak

You've got nothing but an agenda that requires you to constantly deny fact and reject logic. Besides, only a moron would use articles from 2003 to contradict documents translated in March and April of 2006.

You provided a link to one website that states "they believe" - not know. So it is not a fact.

Then you dig up older links from 2003 that support your belief, then I provided links to articles correcting your misinformation.

Deny fact - reject logic? Yes, yours.

[aberdeenwriter]

Originally Posted by Troll

In a court, reasonableness is tested against the actions of a peer in the same position as the person accused of being unreasonable. That is, an action is only reasonable if someone in the same position as Bush would have acted in the same way. That's not a hypothetical question because there were hundreds of leaders in the same position as Bush. The vast majority of the leaders on the planet told Bush that his "evidence" was hogwash, that is was not reasonable to start killing tens of thousands of people and they specifically rejected the course of action that Bush adopted.

Bush's belief that Iraq had WMD was clearly NOT reasonable because no one else reacted to the information the way he did. What's more, Bush never presented his belief as being reasonable. Bush did everything in his power NOT to come across as a calculated, reasonable, straight-thinking person. He wanted the American people to think that he was a bold leader, prepared to do things that reasonable leaders were not prepared to. Iraq was a massive gamble by an unreasonable person. If there had been nukes in Tikrit, he would have been a hero and heroes are normally not reasonable people. Thing is when you act boldly and turn out to be wrong, you just look like a dunce. Which is why this President has the lowest rating of any President not to be impeached.

There were hundreds of leaders who were in the same position as President Bush???

You mean that they were ALSO leaders of the free world?

No?

Well, then they WEREN'T in the same position as Pres. Bush. But the leaders of the following nations recognized that a possible danger existed and they acted along with us.

They believed there was reasonable doubt:

United Kingdom
Spain
Portugal
Denmark
Netherlands
Iceland
Italy

Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania

Poland
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Hungary

Balkans:
Albania
Macedonia
Romania
Bulgaria
Turkey
Croatia
Slovenia
Ukraine

Japan
South Korea
Singapore
Philippines
Afghanistan
Azerbaijan
Uzbekistan
Georgia
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Solomon Islands
Mongolia
Palau
Tonga

El Salvador
Colombia
Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
Honduras

Australia

Kuwait

Eritrea
Ethiopia
Uganda
Rwanda
Angola

You don't know what a hero is. They are regular people who see what needs to be done and they do it in spite of the risk or without regard to their own position, standing, well being, personal concerns or safety.

President Bush put the safety of the people who might have been targeted by Saddam's WMD's before his own concerns.

Sounds pretty ficking heroic to me. And since the invasion his ratings have been plenty high! High enough to get re-elected. The current ratings have more to do with the opposition's skillful massaging of the media messages.

Oh, and to head off any other retorts, there are times when you must take action in the hope you are doing the right thing or else run the risk of more severe consequences by doing nothing.

President Bush took action to prevent a much more serious possible calamity.

[saddino]

Originally Posted by aberdeenwriter

President Bush put his own concerns (his obsession with invading Iraq) before the safety of the people (our troops) who were sent to look for Saddam's nonexistent WMD's.

Fixed.

[BRussell]

Jane Harman, Democratic ranking member of the House Intelligence committee, had this to say about this story.

You would think that for something to be considered “news,” it would have to be, well, new. Yet Republicans including Rep. Pete Hoekstra and Senator Rick Santorum are trying to spin a report on degraded pre-1991 WMDs that were found in Iraq as news of the utmost importance – despite the fact that we’ve known about the existence of these rusty canisters for many years.

There is nothing new here. Nothing in this report, classified or otherwise, contradicts the Duelfer Report, which assessed that we would find degraded pre-1991 weaponry in Iraq.

If Colin Powell had gone to the United Nations in February of 2003 and rested the Administration’s case on the fact that Iraq still possessed degraded weapons from before the first Gulf War, he would have been laughed out of the room. No one seriously believes we went to war over the weapons that are now being hyped, so we should treat this diversion with the lack of interest that it deserves.

In fact, David Kay, who led the U.S. team that searched for WMDs in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, called these stockpiles “less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink.” And Charles Duelfer, the CIA’s weapon inspector, called them “local hazards,” not WMDs.

The real news here is that this report was essentially declassified on demand. Selective declassification for partisan purposes undermines the integrity, and the safety, of the men and women in the intelligence community.

The intelligence community is supposed to speak truth to power. It’s not the IC’s job to provide political cover for the Republican Party. Those pushing this story are trying to manipulate the facts to get an outcome they want, and we know from recent experience what happens when the intelligence gathering process is politicized.

If the Republicans want hearings, then let’s have hearings. But they should cover the use – and misuse – of all pre-war intelligence, not just this flimsy and cherry-picked report that is much ado about nothing.

[Krusty]

Originally Posted by vmarks

The actual declassified doc is here.

You could read it.

I encourage everyone to read it. Its a 4-page doc of which only 1 page has any content. The content raises alarm about weapons but in actuality says nothing. That's why Santorum and his buddy are pretty much standing alone on this tangent, why the story languished, and why the people who really really wished WMDs were found are NOT chiming in with support (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Duelfer (sp ?), Tenet, etc.). These people have already admitted there were no WMDs and boneheads like Santorum are now trying to contradict them with a document that has a lot of conjecture but carefully avoids making a positive statement. Incidentally, Santorum is widely considered the incumbent most likely to lose his seat this fall. Perhaps he's grasping at straws or maybe the RNC has already realized he's a goner and have sent him forth to play the idiot and stir the pot of BS so the minority of lug-heads who've been repeating falsehoods for the last 4 years have some back door to save face for being so terribly, deadly wrong.

The document is short, let's evaluate the statements in it:

1) Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.
We've always known about the spent and unused shell from the Iran/Iraq conflict and fully expected to find some. These are not "WMD"s . A key point of this statement is that they are degraded munitions. Sarin degrades in a matter of months, Mustard takes longer. Sarin is fatal, Mustard gas is only fatal in 1% of cases. If the weapons contain sarin, they are duds, period. If they contain Mustard, they are a maximum of 1% fatal if they were brand new and not degraded. So, what we have is 500 weapons that are somewhere between 0 and 1% fatal. Honest odds are that they are probably at, or extremely close to 0% fatal at this point. You must be joking or clinically insane if you actually believe we started a war over these.

2) Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist
Translation: we've tried really hard to find them all but haven't. God forbid there are more dud munitions out there ... they could give someone a nasty stomach ache if they cracked them open and drank them. Note, this line specifically states "pre-Gulf War" meaning >15 years old. Meaning also definitely, positively degraded. Unless Saddam was planning on giving someone a nasty rash and a tummy ache, these were no longer of any use to him.

3)Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market to anyone stupid enough to buy duds Use of these weapons by terrorist or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition force in Iraq It would imply that the Coalition had won and the insurgents were completely out of lethal weapons The possibility of use outside of Iraq cannot be ruled out The possibility that the moon will explode cannot be ruled out either

Basically,this whole "point" says absolutely nothing. Substitute "my nut-sack" for "Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons" and you will see that this "point" is completely meaningless. What implications might it have on Coalition forces ? This point fails to speculate or spell this out. If the implications included mass death or even mass exposure, why not say it? The reason why is because they don't -- this is fear mongering at its best. It makes you imagine the worst without saying it ... because saying it would be a lie.

4) The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles See point one. Do they mean armed and active projectiles or another batch of duds? Again, they fail to spell it out, relying on fear to imagine the rest. If its true then why not say that they believe there to be weapons that are armed and dangerous amongst the remaining munitions ?

5) The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal. OMFG. This statement alone gives it away. They flat out admit that its entirely possible that NONE, ZIP, ZERO of these weapons are lethal at all. Hazardous ? Sure ... I wouldn't bathe in it. Lethal ? Well, at most they may be lethal (up to the 1% threshold discussed above if its all Mustard Gas that is 100% as potent as new mustard gas). The "many factors" would have to be, in the case of Sarin, some miracle factor that somehow amazingly extends the lethal life of Sarin from months to 15 years.

6) It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.
OK. Are they saying that they are trying to acquire the duds that have been dug up or are they just trying to acquire chemical weapons in general? If they were smart they'd go buy some fresh ones that might actually work. Like point 3, this is an utter non-statement. Absolutely no line has been drawn which connects this statement to other ones listed. If there was a connection, why not say it ? How about "insurgents and Iraqi groups are trying to acquire the leftover munitions from the pre-Gulf war era to use against coalition forces". If this were true, they would say it. Instead its the FUD approach -- let the knee-jerkers say it for them so they don't have to lie.

Are chemical weapons WMDs?
Not in the quantities and consistency found.

Does the "release" claim positively that any of these weapons are, or even probably are, lethal?
No, it does not .

Does this release claim or imply that any of the weapons are post Gulf War or part of Saddam's active aresenal in 2002.
No, it does not.



Read what this document actually says ... what it claims to be true or even probable. It says essentially zero.

There is a reason the media hasn't latched on to this story and a reason why the people who would benefit most from WMDs existence have not jumped on this bandwagon. This is an absolute dead-end claim by Santorum. He, and any one else who jumps on this fool's bandwagon will end up with egg on their face the minute they try to extrapolate any solid implication about WMDs from this report. Though doubtless, Hannity, O'Reilly, and Limbaugh will do their best.