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So your answer is "I still don't know where any WMDs are after three years of saying he was definitely going to use them on the US, but maybe Saddam would've had one in a decade or so."
Understood.
Here's something for you to chew on Chump. Maybe you should become interested in all the regime do ents being released and translated.
This do ent CMPC-2004-000167 talks about a project that started in early 2001 by the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) to use components from the previously destroyed TAMUZ (also known as OZIRAQ) Nuclear Reactor to build a Nuclear Simulator Reactor. The TAMUZ Nuclear Reactor was destroyed by an Israeli air attack in 1981. In September 2002, after almost a year and a half since the start of this Nuclear Project and when it became very clear to the Iraqi Regime that the UN inspectors were coming back to Iraq, a decision was made to stop this Nuclear Activity project. What is interesting in this do ent that the IAEC was warned by the Monitoring Directory within the IAEC that this Nuclear Project is prohibited by the UN resolutions however the IAEC went on with it until September 2002 only when the UN inspectors were on the verge of coming back to Iraq.
This do ent is yet another irrefutable proof that Saddam had never stopped his WMD activities and programs including Nuclear Program activities.
Beginning of Page 3 Translation of do ent CMPC-2004-000167
End of translation of page 3
Beginning of the translation of page 9
End of translation of page 9
Page 11 of the do ent memo dated September 9 2001 that talks about the approval of Chairman of the IAEC to build the Nuclear Reactor Simulator
Now in page 7 of the do ent ( the order of the pages is not chronological) there is a secret memo dated May 30 2002, the Monitoring Department within the IAEC warned the IAEC that this Nuclear Program is totally prohibited by the UN resolutions.
In page 5 of the do ent there is a memo dated September 12 2002 asking the IAEC Engineering Department to stop working on this project because it is prohibited by the UN.
It took the Iraqis almost a year and half to stop working on this Nuclear Project and only after they were absolutely convinced that the UN inspectors were returning to Iraq in matter of few months as they did indeed return in November 2002.
At the time, the US Congress had just started debate on the Authorization to Use Military Force against Iraq for its transgressions against UN Security Council resolutions and its ongoing efforts to build WMD.
The equipment discussed in the memo came from the ruins of Osirak, the nuclear facility built by Saddam in 1982 and destroyed by the Israelis before the reactor could come on line. The mere existence of this equipment violated UN sanctions, and the effort to put it into a simulator shows that the Iraqis had not lost their determination to develop nuclear weapons. Only the credible threat of military force, as requested by President Bush, stopped the Iraqis from completing their project. They had to get rid of the evidence so that Saddam could invite the inspectors to return as a political ploy that would derail US plans for military intervention. It worked, too; the UN decided to accept Saddam's offer, and ChumpDumper believed him too, thus snarling the previous consensus for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein.
The memos demonstrate Saddam's intent to build nuclear weapons and his insistence on continuing research on their development even while supposedly "contained" by UN sanctions.
Another Shahda translation shows the effort Iraq made in procuring aluminum tubes. These memos are less explicit and do not necessarily show that they were intended for nuclear-arms development. However, because of their dual-use capability -- both uses involve weaponry and both were banned by the sanctions -- and taken in context of the above it underscores the fact that Iraq was never going to cooperate and fully disarm under the terms required by UN sanctions and resolutions.
So your answer is "I still don't know where any WMDs are after three years of saying he was definitely going to use them on the US, but maybe Saddam would've had one in a decade or so."
Understood.
You're a simple-minded stooge. The evidence continues to pour in and you're stuck on stupid because there weren't huge stockpiles of WMD's with english-language signs posted by them saying so.
Hey dip .
Asked and answered.
Rummy said he knew where the WMDs were.
He probably did. 21 days is a long time.
Well thank God we secured the oil ministry and not the WMDs.
Good to know we had our priorites straight.
Just curious. What do you make of the do ents now being translated from the former Ba'athist regime?
Do ents aren't WMD.
Do ents aren't an immediate, pressing risk to the USA that required a hurried, unplanned, undermanned war in 2003.
Keep reaching, YV, and watch out for those dangerous do ents. You could hurt yourself.
There was NO case for the war. WHIQ cherry picked wild-assed stuff as "without a doubt", and suppressed all doubts in the intimidated, politicized intelligence community.
The policy was "invade Iraq", no matter what the evidence and counter-evidence were.
regardless, do you guys think it legal for a person to give out classified info.. that is the problem here...
There seems to be a liberal use of the word "appointment" in this thread.
You don't take a career in Intelligence if you can't handle the politics.
CIA breaks laws ALL DAY LONG.. this is why the FBI does not do foreign intel.
Radical Islam is trying to use our laws against us. If we can't stomach the Jack Bauers
of the world then we should close the CIA.
And I WANT to see the democrats say that it's time to shut down the whole CIA.
They don't even want them tapping phones much less using a .50 cal to snipe and blow someones head off or throw out some terrorists from a C130 over the ocean.
If anyone thought they sit around at CIA and like play Xbox or watch TV or give traffic tickets they are on crack.
For all we know SHE is the one that leaked Plume first to try to setup the President.
We can't give the enemy our 100% battle plan.. that includes what the CIA is doing.
the leaked secrets... that is all... GUILTY.. lucky she doesn't receive the death penalty! she should get a long prison sentence to let the other ing leakers know that this will not be tolerated
Dismissed CIA Officer Denies Leak Role
Official Says Agency Is Not Asserting She Told of Secret Prisons
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 25, 2006; A01
A lawyer representing fired CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy said yesterday that his client did not leak any classified information and did not disclose to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest the existence of secret CIA-run prisons in Eastern Europe for suspected terrorists.
The statement by Ty Cobb, a lawyer in the Washington office of Hogan & Hartson who said he was speaking for McCarthy, came on the same day that a senior intelligence official said the agency is not asserting that McCarthy was a key source of Priest's award-winning articles last year disclosing the agency's secret prisons.
McCarthy was fired because the CIA concluded that she had undisclosed contacts with journalists, including Priest, in violation of a security agreement. That does not mean she revealed the existence of the prisons to Priest, Cobb said.
Cobb said that McCarthy, who worked in the CIA inspector general's office, "did not have access to the information she is accused of leaking," namely the classified information about any secret detention centers in Europe. Having unreported media contacts is not unheard of at the CIA but is a violation of the agency's rules.
In a statement last Friday, the agency said it had fired one of its officers for having unauthorized conversations with journalists in which the person "knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence." Intelligence officials subsequently acknowledged that the official was McCarthy and said that Priest is among the journalists with whom she acknowledged sharing information.
Priest won the Pulitzer Prize this month for a series of articles she wrote last year about the intelligence community, including the revelation of the existence of CIA-run prisons in East European countries. The Post withheld the names of the countries at the Bush administration's request, and it attributed the information to current and former intelligence officials from three continents.
The articles sparked a wide-ranging CIA investigation that included polygraphing scores of officials who worked in offices privy to information about the secret prisons, including McCarthy and her boss, CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson. Nowhere in the CIA statement last week was McCarthy accused of leaking information on the prisons, although some news accounts suggested that the CIA had made that claim.
Though McCarthy acknowledged having contact with reporters, a senior intelligence official confirmed yesterday that she is not believed to have played a central role in The Post's reporting on the secret prisons. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing personnel matters.
McCarthy, 61, who earlier held senior posts at the White House and the National Intelligence Council (NIC), has declined requests for comment. But Cobb said she was "devastated" that her government career of more than two decades will "forever be linked with misinformation about the reasons for her termination," and he said that her firing 10 days before she was to retire was "certainly not for the reasons attributed to the agency." His comments cons uted the first statement from her camp since her firing became public last week.
A onetime Africa specialist who served in the early 1990s as the NIC's senior officer responsible for warning of imminent security threats to the country, McCarthy went on to help oversee U.S. intelligence programs on the National Security Council from 1996 to 2001. In that role, she had access to details of every covert intelligence action authorized by the president.
Cobb said McCarthy had planned for some time to leave the CIA to pursue a career in public interest law. She finished night courses for a law degree at Georgetown University and passed the bar exam in November, he said. She formally began her retirement process in December, stopped going to her office on Feb. 7, and was to complete a standard retirement training course and cease employment on April 30.
Cobb said that the polygraph tests and interviews that led to her firing came after she had initiated her retirement, and that she did not quit because she anticipated the agency's action. Although not addressing all these details, the senior intelligence official confirmed that McCarthy was preparing to retire and said she will retain her government pension despite the agency's decision.
"Firing someone who was days away from retirement is the least serious action they could have taken," said a former intelligence official who is friendly with McCarthy but spoke on the condition of anonymity because of speculation on the administration's motive. "That's certainly enough to frighten those who remain in the agency."
Where Cobb's account and the CIA's account differed yesterday is on whether McCarthy discussed any classified information with journalists. Intelligence sources said that the inspector general's office was generally aware of a secret prison program but that McCarthy did not have access to specifics, such as prison locations.
The investigation that led to McCarthy's firing is one of several probes initiated by the Bush administration into high-profile leaks. Another is underway into the New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on a warrantless surveillance program run by the National Security Agency.
But it remains unclear whether any of the investigations will result in criminal charges. A law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said yesterday that the FBI has not opened a formal probe into the prisons disclosure because the CIA has yet to send a formal criminal "referral" to the Justice Department on that issue.
"We do have investigations going," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said during a visit to the field office in Charlotte, the Associated Press reported. "Leaking of classified materials is a concern for those agencies that have classified materials."
Fredrick P. Hitz, who was inspector general at the CIA from 1990 to 1998, said his office was the subject of a leak inquiry after The Post wrote about a classified report he submitted to Congress on the Aldrich H. Ames espionage case. "I was polygraphed several times, as were some of my staff," Hitz said in an interview. No source for the leak was found and the investigation was terminated.
Several national security law experts said yesterday that, looking at what has been publicly disclosed so far, prosecutors would have a difficult time building a criminal case against McCarthy.
Any information obtained during polygraph examinations is essentially useless to prosecutors, since generally it is inadmissible in criminal courts.
In addition, federal espionage laws do not outlaw all disclosures of classified information, at least not specifically. Instead, a collection of separate statutes prohibits unauthorized disclosures of certain categories of information -- such as intercepted communications or codes -- and violations often hinge on important details that are still unclear in the CIA prisons case.
Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research ins ute at George Washington University, said he does not think the Post article includes the kind of operational details that a prosecutor would need to build a case.
"It's the fact of the thing that they're trying to keep secret, not to protect sources and methods, but to hide something controversial," he said. "That seems like a hard prosecution to me."
Kate Martin, executive director of the Center for National Security Studies, said that "even if the espionage statutes were read to apply to leaks of information, we would say the First Amendment prohibits criminalizing leaks of information which reveal wrongful or illegal activities by the government."
Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
===========================
The WH/Repugs smeared the intelligence community by blaming the lack of WMD on "bad intelligence", passing the buck like they always do. The Repugs parachuted a Repub political operative instead of a career professional to run the show, alienating many career professionals. Now, the intelligence community is very probably with the Repugs, so the Repugs have to resort to intimidation, rather the cooperation, to keep the leaks from really exposing the Repugs for the s bags they are, for inhumane programs they run, for unending stream of lies.
I think that they didn't have WMDs in any noteworthy amounts that they were wiling to use and they were working to have WMDs in perhaps a decade or so if they weren't under the constant pressure from the UN inspectors and the US flyovers. Iraq was under our thumbs and if Saddam had any appreciable WMDs like everyone said he had stockpiled and at the ready he would have used them to defend his own regime seeing as regime change was the stated goal of any military action against him.
This has been my position since the start. Notice I have not changed like the Bush supporters from saying they had tons of gas and nukes and yellacake to use against the US in a week's time to saying they must have moved them to somewhere else in Iraq since there is alot of sand in Iraq to saying he must have moved them to somewhere outside of Iraq since we checked all the sand in Iraq even though there is alot of it and we aren't even in control of all the sand in Iraq thanks to the "send just enough troops to fail" strategy Rummy dreamed up on the toilet one day. Of course this morphed into saying well Saddam didn't really have WMDs though he acted like he did which was worth a few thousand American soldiers' and countless Iraqi lives just to find out even though North Korea already has WMDs and Iran was much, much closer to getting them than Saddam could ever dream of in his wettest dream. Also nobody was currently being killed in Iraq but we had to pretend we were angry about folks Saddam gassed 25 years ago when he was our boy fighting the good fight against Iran (wow, Iran is coming up alot here, isn't it) and we were actually cheering Saddam and Rummy shook his ing hand in the infamous vidcap that will remain on the internets for all eternity no matter how much the neocons . No, now the WMDs were moved in RVs and commercial jets to Syria because Saddam is much more interested in preserving a few vials of sarin gas than his own ing 40-year reign over Iraq, right? I mean that just stands to reason that Saddam would pass up two golden opportunities to use WMDs on US forced invading his country twice in the course of two decades AND Israel which was just sitting there within reach of the SCUD missles that he actually did lob at during the Gulf War but surprise - no gas or bioweapons. We haven't found any of the tons and tons of WMDs that Rummy said he knew the location of. "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat" he said on ABC. ABC mother ers! es on this board keep ing about roadsigns and maps not being available to Rummy. Well Rummy said it and you don't have the balls to hold him to it. "Well they moved it because 21 days is alot of time to move WMDs" they say, completely ignoring the fact that Rummy gave away our supposed knowledge of supposed WMDs and damaged the effort to contain supposed WMDs more than anyone in the CIA or State Department could ever dream to. Who the would blab such a thing on ABC? A guy who knew they weren't there, that's who. A guy who would send in just enough troops to take over Baghdad and the secure the oil ministries but not any of the sites he said the WMDs were or convenientely any of the shipment routes out of the country that would stop the export of the WMDs that Saddam didn't use to protect his own ass when he sure as did use them to protect his ass 25 years ago. Rummy's failure to secure the borders or any escape route for the WMDs that Saddam didn't use twice to protect his own ass provided Bush supporters with their last hope that the tons and tons of WMDs were shipped out of the country on 737s to God knows whom God knows where because Saddam wanted to save them for later when he would REALLY need them. I mean, it's completely logical. I wished and wished that I would be proven wrong somewhere in the past three years and I could believe that the people controlling this great country actually knew what they were doing. It simply hasn't happened, and feeble cut-and-paste plagiarism from neocon blogs has done nothing in the face of the cold hard truth that no one can answer one simple question that I have asked over and over again.
Where are the WMDs?
And that, Xray, is ChumpDumper rant.
Patent pending.
All rights reserved.
I apologize for any spelling or grammar errors and the lack of paragraph breaks.
Good night, and God bless America.
Last edited by ChumpDumper; 04-25-2006 at 05:14 AM.
So, what do you think of the Russians feeding them pre-invasion intelligence about our invasion plans?
Or the Russian, French, and German complicity in OFF?
Could that have played a role?
Last edited by Yonivore; 04-25-2006 at 09:01 AM.
What of the stockpiles of pesticides (a precursor to rudimentary nerve agent), more than could conceivably ever be used in an agricultural setting, situated in camoflaged bunkers, next to munitions depots? I know, there were not "WMD" signs.
What of the Iraq scientists who testified Iraq could field some chemical WMD's in 3 weeks, or less, not decades?
What of the translated memos regarding the movement of WMD's, pre-invasion, and of the Nuclear projects that I've already posted in this thread?
Those weren't decades away -- they were active.
But, he apparently was getting plenty of support from France, Germany, and Russia in the form of OFF kickbacks and intelligence and maybe even arms and equipment.
That is the big question. One of the translated memos speaks of moving "Special Ammunition" into position but, obviously it wasn't used. I remember early reports of finding the Tigris and Euphrates contaminated with WMD agents. In any case, I also believe Iraq believed Russian, French, and German obstinance at the U.N., on it's behalf, would effectively stop any U.S. aggression -- obviously a miscalculation. But one that wouldn't prevent Iraq from dispersing, destroying, moving, secreting, or otherwise hiding whatever WMD's he did have in an effort to make a show by an eleventh hour good-faith gesture to re-admit U.N. inspectors. Ooops, again.
You're right Chump, you've remained constant, unwavering, and stubborn -- even in the face of ever more damning revelations about Iraq's WMD capabilities, plans, and assets. Good for you.
I don't know. But, I bet we find out eventually. Of course, you'll be standing by your original position.
Poor effort
I wouldn't worry, no infringement is anticipated.
I'm sure there'll be a line for licensing
It's not your spelling or grammar for which you need to apologize.
Now Chump, I want you to read what everyone knew in
Washington, or thought they knew, and elsewhere in the
world. Read and heed. And go rant to someone who really
cares what you think.
Taken from you favorite news source, CNN.
Transcript: David Kay at Senate hearing
(CNN) --Former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay testified Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee about efforts to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Following is a transcript of Kay's opening remarks before committee members began questioning him.
KAY: As you know and we discussed, I do not have a written statement. This hearing came about very quickly. I do have a few preliminary comments, but I suspect you're more interested in asking questions, and I'll be happy to respond to those questions to the best of my ability.
I would like to open by saying that the talent, dedication and bravery of the staff of the [Iraq Survey Group] that was my privilege to direct is unparalleled and the country owes a great debt of gra ude to the men and women who have served over there and continue to serve doing that.
A great deal has been accomplished by the team, and I do think ... it important that it goes on and it is allowed to reach its full conclusion. In fact, I really believe it ought to be better resourced and totally focused on WMD; that that is important to do it.
But I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future.
Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here.
Sen. [Edward] Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction.
I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war -- certainly, the French president, [Jacques] Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq's possession of WMD.
The Germans certainly -- the intelligence service believed that there were WMD.
It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.
We're also in a period in which we've had intelligence surprises in the proliferation area that go the other way. The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location.
The Libyan program recently discovered was far more extensive than was assessed prior to that.
There's a long record here of being wrong. There's a good reason for it. There are probably multiple reasons. Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don't have free and open societies.
In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441.
Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had.
We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both do ents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.
I think the aim -- and certainly the aim of what I've tried to do since leaving -- is not political and certainly not a witch hunt at individuals. It's to try to direct our attention at what I believe is a fundamental fault analysis that we must now examine.
And let me take one of the explanations most commonly given: Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong explanation.
As leader of the effort of the Iraqi Survey Group, I spent most of my days not out in the field leading inspections. It's typically what you do at that level. I was trying to motivate, direct, find strategies.
In the course of doing that, I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance.
And never -- not in a single case -- was the explanation, "I was pressured to do this." The explanation was very often, "The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it."
And each case was different, but the conversations were sufficiently in depth and our relationship was sufficiently frank that I'm convinced that, at least to the analysts I dealt with, I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, "inappropriate command influence" that led them to take that position.
It was not that. It was the honest difficulty based on the intelligence that had -- the information that had been collected that led the analysts to that conclusion.
And you know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that.
We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that.
The fact that it wasn't tells me that we've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong, and we've got to figure out what was there. And that's what I call fundamental fault analysis.
And like I say, I think we've got other cases other than Iraq. I do not think the problem of global proliferation of weapons technology of mass destruction is going to go away, and that's why I think it is an urgent issue.
And let me really wrap up here with just a brief summary of what I think we are now facing in Iraq. I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the [Iraq Survey Group] there's still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened.
A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. "It had been the regime's. The regime is gone. I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable."
I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.
The result is -- do ent destruction -- we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.
But I do think the survey group -- and I think Charlie Duelfer is a great leader. I have the utmost confidence in Charles. I think you will get as full an answer as you can possibly get.
And let me just conclude by my own personal tribute, both to the president and to [CIA Director] George Tenet, for having the courage to select me to do this, and my successor, Charlie Duelfer, as well.
Both of us are known for probably at times regrettable streak of independence. I came not from within the administration, and it was clear and clear in our discussions and no one asked otherwise that I would lead this the way I thought best and I would speak the truth as we found it. I have had absolutely no pressure prior, during the course of the work at the [Iraq Survey Group], or after I left to do anything otherwise.
I think that shows a level of maturity and understanding that I think bodes well for getting to the bottom of this. But it is really up to you and your staff, on behalf of the American people, to take on that challenge. It's not something that anyone from the outside can do. So I look forward to these hearings and other hearings at how you will get to the conclusions.
I do believe we have to understand why reality turned out to be different than expectations and estimates. But you have more public service -- certainly many of you -- than I have ever had, and you recognize that this is not unusual.
I told Sen. [John] Warner [chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee] earlier that I've been drawn back as a result of recent film of reminding me of something. At the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the combined estimate was unanimity in the intelligence service that there were no Soviet warheads in Cuba at the time of the missile crisis.
Fortunately, President Kennedy and [then-Attorney General] Robert Kennedy disagreed with the estimate and chose a course of action less ambitious and aggressive than recommended by their advisers.
But the most important thing about that story, which is not often told, is that as a result after the Cuban missile crisis, immediate steps were taken to correct our inability to collect on the movement of nuclear material out of the Soviet Union to other places.
So that by the end of the Johnson administration, the intelligence community had a capability to do what it had not been able to do at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.
I think you face a similar responsibility in ensuring that the community is able to do a better job in the future than it has done in the past.
Now does this help you small mind to comprehend what
has been said here time and time again.
IF she indeed leaked ANY information that contributed to loss of life or anything comparable thereof, that is treason and should be dealt with accordingly.
Quit the WMD talk. Its getting old. Everything in life is about results. Last time I checked, there werent any on the WMD front. Spin it all day, either they never were there or they were moved. Either way, there arent any in American hands. Therefore, there werent any.
Question: She leaked info to the press, not a foreign power, right? Really, it doesnt matter, but if she leaked sensitive operational info to foreign powers, thats a death penalty.
Organizations like the CIA dont abide by the same rules as other federal ins utions (nor should they). I dont agree with wire-tapping American citizens without a warrant (illegals are fine). I dont care how they 'get it done' on the foreign front. Send prisoners to 3rd world countries that torture for info. these ing bleeding hearts.
Info in the CIA should not be leaked. Period. I cant seriously think of one situation where it is ethically correct to to do it even.
I love the new CIA logo
The revelations exposed the cooperation of countries that would have rather not the world know they were assisting the United States. In that sense, we may never know the consequences to cooperative people in those countries where human rights are -- shall we say -- less valued than here.
Plus, it probably told al Qaeda where some of their "disappeared" comrades had gone.
There's been plenty of evidence discovered since the invasion to point to the existence of WMD's and the intention of the Ba'athist regime.
Because, of course, foreign powers don't read the New York Times, right?
Amen to that!
Nor can I.
Last edited by Yonivore; 04-25-2006 at 10:51 AM.
A lot of the arguing, in here, over the whole Iraq question tends to begin when someone like me challenges an article of faith held by someone like ChumpDumper. The Chumpy-type usually disregards all other evidence pointing to that fact -- particularly if the original poster didn't reference all the other evidence when making the assertion (probably because all the other evidence has been a settled matter -- or so the original poster thought.).
Anyway, by way of an example, I raise the idiotic article of faith that "there was no relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda" and offer the following information as proof there was (at least in the minds of the Clinton Administration) a significant relationship between al Qaeda and the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein as early as 1998.
So, when I say al Qaeda and Iraq had a relationship going into the invasion, don't argue with me, argue with Bill Clinton.
Thomas Joscelyn's latest Daily Standard column, concerning the whole Mary McCarthy matter, is an interesting read that brings up some old Clinton ghosts.
While there is some doubt surrounding the exact reasons for the CIA's termination of Mary McCarthy at this point, there is no doubt that the media has been quick to lionize her. On Sunday, for example, The New York Times ran a ridiculous piece that argued McCarthy had an "independent streak" because she challenged the Clinton administration on its decision to destroy a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant named al-Shifa.
I say that the Times piece was ridiculous because the Old Grey Lady left out or spun nearly every salient fact surrounding the matter. Now, I realize that the strike on al-Shifa was controversial. Many public commentators to this day insist that the strike was a mistake. Christopher Hitchens made this argument for Slate yesterday. But, as Joceslyn points out in his Daily Standard piece, the public discussion of the events in August 1998 has been quite lacking. The New York Times, in particular, has made no real attempt to understand the facts of the matter at all.
He lays out some of the facts in the article but, I'll summarize and add to the evidence here:
(1) Several Suspected Facilities. Most importantly, al-Shifa was not the only facility in Sudan where Iraqi chemical weapons scientists were suspected of collaborating with al Qaeda. John Gannon, a former director at the CIA, told Stephen Hayes that there were "several" facilities that were suspected. Contemporaneous open source accounts confirm this as well. According to those same accounts, the Clinton administration chose al-Shifa, instead of other possible targets, because it was not close to any residential buildings. The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon decided not to strike another suspected facility because of “its proximity to residential neighborhoods, including a diplomatic enclave. Instead, strike planning focused on the Shifa plant in an industrial section of Khartoum.”
(2) NSA Intercepts. Much of the criticism of the al-Shifa strike centers on a soil sample taken outside the facility that purportedly contained traces of EMPTA, a precursor used in the production of VX nerve gas, which is a particularly nasty weapon. If you read the Times account you would think that this was the strongest, or even the only, piece of evidence used to justify the strike.
That's not the case. As Joscelyn points out, President Clinton authorized the intelligence community to discuss the multiple threads of evidence used to justify the strike. One thread, in particular, was more important than the others. The NSA intercepted communications between the father of Iraq's chemical weapons program, Emad Al Ani, and the plant's management. Thus, the soil sample was not the only, nor even the strongest piece of evidence used.
Something that caused me to drop my criticism of Clinton over the "Aspirin Factory" strike...unless I was feeling particularly perturbed at Clinton apologists.
(3) CIA's Declassified Reporting to Congress. For years after the strike, the CIA reported to Congress that Iraq was working in Sudan on chemical and possibly even biological weapons. You can read those reports for yourself via the links provided here. I continue to wonder why this reporting was, apparently, never futher investigated by the CIA's own Iraq Survey Group or any other official government body.
(4) The CIA's Michael Scheuer. Before his own flip-flop on the issue of Iraq-al Qaeda, Michael Scheuer cited open source reporting on the Iraq-Sudan-al Qaeda connection in his book Through Our Enemies Eyes (2002). The CIA's first bin Laden hunter wrote:
There are lot more quotes to choose from, but you get the picture...at least, you would think you'd get the picture.
(5) The State Department's Explanation. State Department deputy spokesman James Foley addressed the press after the strike. He described the plant as part of the Sudanese military-industrial complex that was operated by bin Laden and that “we believe there were links between the Sudanese and Iraq on this issue.” Foley told reporters that “hundreds of Iraqi experts have worked in Sudan since the war, including in the manufacture of munitions.” He added, “we have evidence of ties between Sudan's chemical weapons aspirations, the Shifa facility and other chemical weapons actors” and “there is evidence that Sudan sought help in the pursuit of a CW (chemical weapons) capability from other countries, principally Iraq.”
(6) The Clinton Administration's Original Indictment of Osama Bin Laden. The Iraq-al Qaeda cooperation at several facilities in Sudan may have been what Clinton administration prosecutors were thinking of when they included this allegation in the original indictment of bin Laden:
The original indictment of bin Laden, including the language above, was filed just a few months before the strike on al-Shifa. Critics (such as you -- although I question that you ever were even aware of this language to begin with) have tried to argue that since this language was dropped from the new indictment of bin Laden months later that it has no merit. But, the updated indictment of bin Laden focused narrowly on the August 1998 embassy bombings. That indictment contained facts directly relevant to the embassy bombings, as opposed to the more generic earlier indictment. In short, just because it was dropped it doesn't mean it was wrong.
(7) Richard Clarke and Mary McCarthy's fellow NSC staffers. Richard Clarke, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have all defended the intelligence surrounding al-Shifa from the beginning. The indictment referenced above was unsealed in November 1998. The 9-11 commission report notes that when Clarke read the passage above it "led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger [National Security Advisor] that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was ‘probably a direct result of the Iraq-Al Qida agreement.’ Clarke added that VX precursor traces found near al Shifa were the ‘exact formula used by Iraq.’”
So, Clarke was clearly familiar with the broader set of intelligence surrounding Iraq's activities in Sudan. Clarke also publicly defended the intelligence in the pages of The Washington Post on January 23, 1999.
One of the points of my piece in the Daily Standard is to ask why the press has not challenged Richard Clarke and his fellow NSC staffers on this issue. They now claim that none of this means that Iraq and al Qaeda were really working together. How do you explain that?
(8) The Iraqi Regime publicly praises bin Laden just one week after the strike on al-Shifa. As Stephen Hayes reported in his The Connection:
It is also worth noting that senior level Iraqi officials traveled to Sudan in the aftermath of the strike to publicly condemn the U.S. There were, actually, a number of visits back and forth between Sudanese and Iraqi officials.
(9) An "increase" in the Iraqi presence in Sudan following the strike. The New York Times reported in November 1998 that, according to the Clinton administration, there was an “increase in the Iraqi presence in Sudan” in the wake of the strike. This one additional piece of evidence that the Clinton administration used to bolster its argument that it had made the right decision.
(10) Former Clinton Administration officials defend the decision to stike al-Shifa to this day. Self-explanatory.
These are 10 quick facts concerning August 1998. There are dozens more. It takes willful ignorance to pretend that none of this happened. And so goes almost every other argument raised by opponents to President Bush.
In fact, the only thing that changed from August 1998 to March 2003 WAS the American Presidency; from one the liberals loved to one the liberals hated.
I think the article of faith that there were no WMD's in Iraq prior to the invasion is another example that will, with time, prove to be as false as the no relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda canard.
You continued to ignore that Iraqi regime change was stated U.S. policy under the Clinton Administration. You continue to ignore that following the invasion large stockpiles of CHEMICALS that could be assembled into CHEMICAL WEAPONS, with a moments notice, were found...regardless of the fact that Iraq chose, for whatever reason, not to use them.
Just like you're ignoring the translations of do ents from the former regime that all but spell out the fact they possessed "prohibited weapons" and were actively pursuing nuclear weapons.
Just when we think we've established a fact, such as there was indeed a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, people like ChumpDumper cause the whole damn thing to be argued all over again. It's ridiculous.
Look Yoni, neither Fox News nor the Bush administration use your cut-and-paste plagiarism from right wing blogs to prop their outright failure to procure any appreciable WMDs and they aren't trying to pass off bug spray that could give you a nasty cough if someone had three weeks lead time to mix it up right as a WMD, even though they did have three weeks to mix it up and deploy it and use it on the invading US forces or Israel right?
Your best guess (and it's only a guess, you admitted it) is that all the tons and tons of non-bug spray WMDs you claim Saddam had are in the hands of an unknown party (hey, they could be terrorists who will use them on us next week - that has to be better than Saddam who never ever used them on us, right?) in an unknown location (possibly down the street to be used at Fiesta since our southern border is so poorly guarded, right?) in unknown amounts (enough to kill some bugs? or hundreds of thousands of Americans?) -- and we don't know any of this thanks to the battle plan of the Bush administration that really didn't seem to care about securing the borders of Iraq to stop any possible export of any possible WMDs.
I feel so much safer now that we have no idea where anything is and can't do anything about it. Don't you?
So, did al Qaeda and Iraq have a relationship?
And, don't you think it's possible Russia, Germany, and France conspired to help Iraq -- unbeknownst to the U.S. -- and that that could be the reason nothing was where it was supposed to be when we got there?
, we find out Russia was giving them our battle plans and shipping them equipment; is it such a stretch to believe they helped them get rid of their stockpiles? And, the pesticides are what remained. Who knows how much and what was destroyed, moved, or hidden before we invaded.
You're going from a skeptic to a Hussein apologist. There is plenty of evidence to support Iraq has an active WMD program and that Iraq was colluding with al Qaeda -- to deny that simply because the weapons weren't where we believed they were is idiotic.
I'd still like for you to admit there was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq dating from at least 1998. Will you do that for me?
Errrahhhh, Chump, you didn't like CNN's little article from the
inspector himself. You are such a turnip. Admit once in awhile you
are wrong as two left feet and really are a chump.
Did they? They had very low level contacts if anything. Nobody, not even the Bush administration is using your plagiarized blogs to support their policies -- you'd think they'd be shouting this from the rooftops considering their poll numbers. There simply is nothing like the "Saddam was behind 9/11" fallacies that the administration was all too happy not to discount. Ultimately, AQ and the Ba'athists are so diametrically opposed that the kind of cooperation you are dreaming of could never happen.So, did al Qaeda and Iraq have a relationship?you and your trying to make this about me. This war was about WMDs and we failed to get them or even prove they existed.You're going from a skeptic to a Hussein apologist.
If there was this Grand Alliance between Iraq, AQ and Sudan, why the living have we not done one thing about Sudan EVER. It fits all your criteria - WMDs and AQ contact -- oh and they just happened to have an active genocide of hundreds of thousands of people in the past couple of years - not a few hundred two decades ago?
Why have you not clamored for regime change there?
EVER?
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