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"Did you see how it looked when I landed? I made um turn this here boat around so you couldn't see the coast of Sandy-a-go! And you people thought I was stewpid!"
You know, it would; if it were true.
"Did you see how it looked when I landed? I made um turn this here boat around so you couldn't see the coast of Sandy-a-go! And you people thought I was stewpid!"
Sorry, none of the other reasons mattered as much as this one. We were being told we were going to be nuked by Iraq.
Nah, Feith and company cherry picked and exaggerated other questionable intel and outright lies too.And, now, since you've accepted as fact that WMDs were the ONLY justification for going to war in Iraq, then this guy "Curveball" was the ONLY source used to justify the ONLY justification for going to war in Iraq.
We were right, you were wrong. Stings, don't it?That corner into which you've painted yourself must be getting pretty tight.
The other reasons were presented as mere footnotes listed in small fine print.. Like a credit card commercial with the tiny do ented rules and provisions that are presented in the final 2 seconds of the commercial located at the bottom of the screen..
From the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld . . .
In Sometimes-Brusque 'Snowflakes,' He Shared Worldview, Shaped Policy
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2007; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...3103095_pf.html
In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.
The memos, often referred to as "snowflakes," shed light on Rumsfeld's brusque management style and on his efforts to address key challenges during his tenure as Pentagon chief. Spanning from 2002 to shortly after his resignation following the 2006 congressional elections, a sampling of his trademark missives obtained yesterday reveals a defense secretary disdainful of media criticism and driven to reshape public opinion of the Iraq war.
Rumsfeld, whose sometimes abrasive approach often alienated other Cabinet members and White House staff members, produced 20 to 60 snowflakes a day and regularly poured out his thoughts in writing as the basis for developing policy, aides said. The memos are not classified but are marked "for official use only."
In a 2004 memo on the deteriorating situation in Iraq, Rumsfeld concluded that the challenges there are "not unusual." Pessimistic news reports -- "our publics risk falling prey to the argument that all is lost" -- simply result from the wrong standards being applied, he wrote in one of the memos obtained by The Washington Post.
Under siege in April 2006, when a series of retired generals denounced him and called for his resignation in newspaper op-ed pieces, Rumsfeld produced a memo after a conference call with military analysts. "Talk about Somalia, the Philippines, etc. Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists," he wrote.
People will "rally" to sacrifice, he noted after the meeting. "They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory."
The meeting also led Rumsfeld to write that he needed a team to help him "go out and push people back, rather than simply defending" Iraq policy and strategy. "I am always on the defense. They say I do it well, but you can't win on the defense," he wrote. "We can't just keep taking hits."
The only man to hold the top Pentagon job twice -- as both the youngest and the oldest defense secretary -- Rumsfeld suggested that the public should know that there will be no "terminal event" in the fight against terrorism like the signing ceremony on the USS Missouri when Japan surrendered to end World War II. "It is going to be a long war," he wrote. "Iraq is only one battleground."
Based on the discussion with military analysts, Rumsfeld tied Iran and Iraq. "Iran is the concern of the American people, and if we fail in Iraq, it will advantage Iran," he wrote in his April 2006 memo.
Rumsfeld declined to comment, but an aide said the points in that memo were Rumsfeld's distillation of the analysts' comments, though he added that the secretary is known for using the term "bumper stickers."
"You are running a story based off of selective quotations and gross mischaracterizations from a handful of memos -- carefully picked from the some 20,000 written while Rumsfeld served as Secretary," Rumsfeld aide Keith Urbahn wrote in an e-mail. "After almost all meetings, he dictated his recollections of what was said for his own records."
In one of his longer ruminations, in May 2004, Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the terrorism fight as a "worldwide insurgency." The goal of the enemy, he wrote, is to "end the state system, using terrorism, to drive the non-radicals from the world." He then advised aides "to test what the results could be" if the war on terrorism were renamed.
Neither Europe nor the United Nations understands the threat or the bigger picture, Rumsfeld complained in the same memo. He also lamented that oil wealth has at times detached Muslims "from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed," he wrote. "An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism."
If radicals "get a hold of" oil-rich Saudi Arabia, he added, the United States will have "an enormous national security problem."
The memos delve into issues beyond Iraq and terrorism. In a memo to national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley in July 2006, Rumsfeld warned that the United States is "getting run out of Central Asia" by the Russians, who are doing a "considerably better job at bullying" than Washington is doing to "counter their bullying."
As public discontent and congressional questioning grew in 2006, his final year at the Pentagon, a series of snowflakes revealed a man determined to counter the chorus of media criticism in one- or two-line zingers to staff members about specific articles.
"I think you ought to get a letter off about Ralph Peters' op-ed in the New York Post. It is terrible," he writes on Feb. 6, 2006. In a Feb. 2 New York Post column, Peters decried "chronic troop shortages in Iraq" while the Pentagon buys "high-tech toys that have no missions."
On March 10, he commanded J. Dorrance Smith, the assistant defense secretary for public affairs, to craft a "better presentation to respond to this business that the Department of Defense has no plan. This is just utter nonsense. We need to knock it down hard." A Washington Post-ABC News poll that month found that 65 percent of Americans thought that Bush had no plan for victory.
On March 20, Rumsfeld ordered a point-by-point analysis of the seven "mistakes" columnist Trudy Rubin wrote about in the Philadelphia Inquirer and a response to her essay -- which he wanted to see before it was sent out. Rubin wrote that the war had "gone sour."
"Please have someone find precisely when I said 'dead-enders' and what the context was," he ordered Smith in September 2006.
A November 2006 editorial in the New York Times that said the Army was ruined "is disgraceful," Rumsfeld wrote to Smith. The editorial said that "one welcome dividend" of Rumsfeld's departure was that the United States would "now have a chance to rebuild the Army he spent most of his tenure running down."
Rumsfeld later reprimanded his staff, writing, "I read the letter we sent in rebuttal. I thought it rather weak and not signed at the level it should have been." He then instructed staffers to prepare an article about the Army. "We need to get that story out," he wrote on Nov. 28, 2006, a Tuesday. He ordered a draft by Friday.
That's not how I read the AUMF in Iraq. But, whatever gets you through your delusions.
I am talking about the media blitz on wmds, mushroom clouds,mobile bio weapons labs, 45 minutes strike capabilities... drones.. you name it and they advertised it..
So, blame the media for being so focused on WMD's.
Blame the administration for putting the focus on WMDs.
After the Iraq war we can safely say,
"The World is a much safer place to live in"
Keep up the good work . . .
Aug. 26, 2002
Cheney, Vice President
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
Bush: Iraq Currently Expanding WMD Production
Sep. 12, 2002
George W. Bush, Speech to UN General Assembly
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."
Sep. 12, 2002
George W. Bush
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
Bush: Iraq Has WMD Stockpile
Oct. 5, 2002
George W. Bush, Radio Address
"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."
Bush: Iraq Possesses and Produces Chemical Weapons
Oct. 7, 2002
George W. Bush
"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mus gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."
Bush: 500 Tons of Sarin, 30,000 Munitions
Jan. 28, 2003
George W. Bush
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mus and VX nerve agent" and "upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents... "
May 30, 2003
Bush cites 2 trailers found as evidence of " the weapons of mass destruction" that were the United States' primary justification for going to war.
washingtonpost
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."
George W. Bush, Speech to UN General Assembly 9/12/2002
"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons. We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
George W. Bush, Radio Address 10/5/2002
"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mus gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."
George W. Bush, Cincinnati, Ohio Speech 10/7/2002
"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas."
George W. Bush, Cincinnati, Ohio Speech 10/7/2002
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mus and VX nerve agent."
George W. Bush, State of the Union Address 1/28/2003
Sep. 18, 2002
Donald Rumsfeld
His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons—including anthrax and botulism toxin, and possibly smallpox.
His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons—including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mus gas.
His regime has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons.
The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason.
Paul Wolfowitz, May 9, 2003
In this case, such a "delusion" is probably informed by what our President told us on March 17, 2003 in a nationally-televised speech from the Oval Office. The speech makes it quite clear that the purported stockpiles of WMD's provide the justification for war, and that while ridding Iraq of a dictator will be a happy consequence of an invasion, it is not an overriding justification for going to war:
THE PRESIDENT: My fellow citizens, events in Iraq have now reached the final days of decision. For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war. That regime pledged to reveal and destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
Since then, the world has engaged in 12 years of diplomacy. We have passed more than a dozen resolutions in the United Nations Security Council. We have sent hundreds of weapons inspectors to oversee the disarmament of Iraq. Our good faith has not been returned.
The Iraqi regime has used diplomacy as a ploy to gain time and advantage. It has uniformly defied Security Council resolutions demanding full disarmament. Over the years, U.N. weapon inspectors have been threatened by Iraqi officials, electronically bugged, and systematically deceived. Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime have failed again and again -- because we are not dealing with peaceful men.
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people.
The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda.
The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.
The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat. But we will do everything to defeat it. Instead of drifting along toward tragedy, we will set a course toward safety. Before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger will be removed.
The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security. That duty falls to me, as Commander-in-Chief, by the oath I have sworn, by the oath I will keep.
Recognizing the threat to our country, the United States Congress voted overwhelmingly last year to support the use of force against Iraq. America tried to work with the United Nations to address this threat because we wanted to resolve the issue peacefully. We believe in the mission of the United Nations. One reason the U.N. was founded after the second world war was to confront aggressive dictators, actively and early, before they can attack the innocent and destroy the peace.
In the case of Iraq, the Security Council did act, in the early 1990s. Under Resolutions 678 and 687 -- both still in effect -- the United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a question of authority, it is a question of will.
Last September, I went to the U.N. General Assembly and urged the nations of the world to unite and bring an end to this danger. On November 8th, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations, and vowing serious consequences if Iraq did not fully and immediately disarm.
Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed. And it will not disarm so long as Saddam Hussein holds power. For the last four-and-a-half months, the United States and our allies have worked within the Security Council to enforce that Council's long-standing demands. Yet, some permanent members of the Security Council have publicly announced they will veto any resolution that compels the disarmament of Iraq. These governments share our assessment of the danger, but not our resolve to meet it. Many nations, however, do have the resolve and for ude to act against this threat to peace, and a broad coalition is now gathering to enforce the just demands of the world. The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours.
In recent days, some governments in the Middle East have been doing their part. They have delivered public and private messages urging the dictator to leave Iraq, so that disarmament can proceed peacefully. He has thus far refused. All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end. Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing. For their own safety, all foreign nationals -- including journalists and inspectors -- should leave Iraq immediately.
Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them. If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.
It is too late for Saddam Hussein to remain in power. It is not too late for the Iraqi military to act with honor and protect your country by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Our forces will give Iraqi military units clear instructions on actions they can take to avoid being attacked and destroyed. I urge every member of the Iraqi military and intelligence services, if war comes, do not fight for a dying regime that is not worth your own life.
And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, "I was just following orders."
Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation, the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war, and every measure will be taken to win it. Americans understand the costs of conflict because we have paid them in the past. War has no certainty, except the certainty of sacrifice.
Yet, the only way to reduce the harm and duration of war is to apply the full force and might of our military, and we are prepared to do so. If Saddam Hussein attempts to cling to power, he will remain a deadly foe until the end. In desperation, he and terrorists groups might try to conduct terrorist operations against the American people and our friends. These attacks are not inevitable. They are, however, possible. And this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail. The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed.
Our government is on heightened watch against these dangers. Just as we are preparing to ensure victory in Iraq, we are taking further actions to protect our homeland. In recent days, American authorities have expelled from the country certain individuals with ties to Iraqi intelligence services. Among other measures, I have directed additional security of our airports, and increased Coast Guard patrols of major seaports. The Department of Homeland Security is working closely with the nation's governors to increase armed security at critical facilities across America.
Should enemies strike our country, they would be attempting to shift our attention with panic and weaken our morale with fear. In this, they would fail. No act of theirs can alter the course or shake the resolve of this country. We are a peaceful people -- yet we're not a fragile people, and we will not be intimidated by thugs and killers. If our enemies dare to strike us, they and all who have aided them, will face fearful consequences.
We are now acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater. In one year, or five years, the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be multiplied many times over. With these capabilities, Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies could choose the moment of deadly conflict when they are strongest. We choose to meet that threat now, where it arises, before it can appear suddenly in our skies and cities.
The cause of peace requires all free nations to recognize new and undeniable realities. In the 20th century, some chose to appease murderous dictators, whose threats were allowed to grow into genocide and global war. In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth.
Terrorists and terror states do not reveal these threats with fair notice, in formal declarations -- and responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide. The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now.
As we enforce the just demands of the world, we will also honor the deepest commitments of our country. Unlike Saddam Hussein, we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty. And when the dictator has departed, they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation.
The United States, with other countries, will work to advance liberty and peace in that region. Our goal will not be achieved overnight, but it can come over time. The power and appeal of human liberty is felt in every life and every land. And the greatest power of freedom is to overcome hatred and violence, and turn the creative gifts of men and women to the pursuits of peace.
That is the future we choose. Free nations have a duty to defend our people by uniting against the violent. And tonight, as we have done before, America and our allies accept that responsibility.
Good night, and may God continue to bless America.
Most of you aren't interested in the truth. I will not be
convinced otherwise. Hate Bush is your your thing. Love
the troops, hate their their mission. But you support the
troops. Yeah, and I love dimm-0-craps!
You got the message!
Ray you aren't interested in why we got into this war. bush = truth to you and that's your shortcoming.
I have no problem with the war. It was a starting point.
And hang on to your hat. The dimm-o-craps will keep right
on. You keep drinking the coolaid. I have told you many
times this is only the visible part of the "global" war.
We need a base in the ME and Iraq and Afghanistan is it.
So where are the WMDs?
He used them on the Kurds and Iran. And buried the
rest. Okay?
Buried them where?
Did we ask him where?
Did we waterboard him and get the locations?
Why don't we have that information?
I think he shipped some to Syria, as well. Of course, there's a lot of desert in Iraq that has no civilization and on which there is no conflict. It would take a miniscule tract of desert to hide all the WMD's it was claimed he had.
All that aside, there were plenty of indicators, left behind, that should have convinced any thinking American that Iraq had a very active and vibrant WMD program.
That's right, thinking American; as opposed to the spoon-fed nutters.
Damn Chump, call the Wh and give them your phone
number. They need you to ask all these questions.
so you admit he disposed of them long ago=there are no wmd's
Did we not even ask Saddam?That's right, thinking American; as opposed to the spoon-fed nutters.
Isn't it right and thinking to ask him?
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