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You and Republicans are different shades of grey. We need a better strategy in the middle east. You two just bicker and point fingers while you follow the same course.
Judging from your statements I can only conclude that you believe nothing of any consequence happened in Iraq before 2008.
Eisenhower got us involved in the Vietnam war after the French got out, by sending the first "military advisers"..Vietnamn was undermined by liberals. After Tet the Vietcong were a spent force. WIth Johnson's bombing of hte North they were ready to deal. Then the Left raised hell and made up shit and we cut and ran.Yeah, like Korea and Vietnam were mission accomplished too.The once successful iraq. Then Obama cut and ran.You're guy successfully ended a successful Iraq war. You have no leg to stand on.Judging from your statements I can only conclude that you believe nothing of any consequence happened in Iraq before 2008.
Leg to stand on about what?
Just like they wanted to do in Iraq. Thank Goodness Bush was made of stronger stuff.
Eisenhower got us involved in the Vietnam war after the French got out, by sending the first "military advisers"..Vietnamn was undermined by liberals. After Tet the Vietcong were a spent force. WIth Johnson's bombing of hte North they were ready to deal. Then the Left raised hell and made up shit and we cut and ran.Yeah, like Korea and Vietnam were mission accomplished too.The once successful iraq. Then Obama cut and ran.You're guy successfully ended a successful Iraq war. You have no leg to stand on.
Leg to stand on about what?
Just like they wanted to do in Iraq. Thank Goodness Bush was made of stronger stuff.
JFK was assassinated by right wing extremists, because he was going to end the Vietnam war.
LBJ was duped by the war mongers, and that's why he refused to run for re-election.
Tricky Dick promised to end the war when he ran for president, but broadened the war also invading Laos. He kept the war going another seven years for the profits of the "industrial military contractors" which Ike warned us about.
And Shrub invaded Iraq for the profits of Cheney's Halliburton. They were both chicken hawks, too cowardly to go fight in the Vietnam war that the right wingers loved.
Someday the cons WILL realize the U.S. is NOT the world dictator, and can't force the will of the right wing extremists on ANY country. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan proved it. Cons never get tired of getting their asses kicked.
Meds. You need meds.Eisenhower got us involved in the Vietnam war after the French got out, by sending the first "military advisers"..Vietnamn was undermined by liberals. After Tet the Vietcong were a spent force. WIth Johnson's bombing of hte North they were ready to deal. Then the Left raised hell and made up shit and we cut and ran.Yeah, like Korea and Vietnam were mission accomplished too.The once successful iraq. Then Obama cut and ran.You're guy successfully ended a successful Iraq war. You have no leg to stand on.
Leg to stand on about what?
Just like they wanted to do in Iraq. Thank Goodness Bush was made of stronger stuff.
JFK was assassinated by right wing extremists, because he was going to end the Vietnam war.
LBJ was duped by the war mongers, and that's why he refused to run for re-election.
Tricky Dick promised to end the war when he ran for president, but broadened the war also invading Laos. He kept the war going another seven years for the profits of the "industrial military contractors" which Ike warned us about.
And Shrub invaded Iraq for the profits of Cheney's Halliburton. They were both chicken hawks, too cowardly to go fight in the Vietnam war that the right wingers loved.
Someday the cons WILL realize the U.S. is NOT the world dictator, and can't force the will of the right wing extremists on ANY country. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan proved it. Cons never get tired of getting their asses kicked.
Yes, it is dangerous. But for dimocraps it's a convenient lie. A lie that Republicans are tired of fighting.
But it's time you realized that's what it is -- Just another lie from the party of lies --
From today's WSJ. I'd post a link, but you'll just run into a subscription wall
The Dangerous Lie That ‘Bush Lied’
Some journalists still peddle this canard as if it were fact. This is defamatory and could end up hurting the country.
President George W. Bush
By
LAURENCE H. SILBERMAN
Feb. 8, 2015 6:25 p.m. ET
In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”
I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction—a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community’s determination that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—I am, therefore, keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the “Bush lied” allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.
The intelligence community’s 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated, in a formal presentation to President Bush and to Congress, its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction—a belief in which the NIE said it held a 90% level of confidence. That is about as certain as the intelligence community gets on any subject.
Recall that the head of the intelligence community, Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, famously told the president that the proposition that Iraq possessed WMD was “a slam dunk.” Our WMD commission carefully examined the interrelationships between the Bush administration and the intelligence community and found no indication that anyone in the administration sought to pressure the intelligence community into its findings. As our commission reported, presidential daily briefs from the CIA dating back to the Clinton administration were, if anything, more alarmist about Iraq’s WMD than the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.
Saddam had manifested sharp hostility toward America, including firing at U.S. planes patrolling the no-fly zone set up by the armistice agreement ending the first Iraq war. Saddam had also attempted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush —a car-bombing plot was foiled—during Mr. Bush’s visit to Kuwait in 1993. But President George W. Bush based his decision to go to war on information about Saddam’s WMD. Accordingly, when Secretary of State Colin Powell formally presented the U.S. case to the United Nations, Mr. Powell relied entirely on that aspect of the threat from Iraq.
Our WMD commission ultimately determined that the intelligence community was “dead wrong” about Saddam’s weapons. But as I recall, no one in Washington political circles offered significant disagreement with the intelligence community before the invasion. The National Intelligence Estimate was persuasive—to the president, to Congress and to the media.
Granted, there were those who disagreed with waging war against Saddam even if he did possess WMD. Some in Congress joined Brent Scowcroft, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and former national security adviser, in publicly doubting the wisdom of invading Iraq. It is worth noting, however, that when Saddam was captured and interrogated, he told his interrogators that he had intended to seek revenge on Kuwait for its cooperation with the U.S. by invading again at a propitious time. This leads me to speculate that if the Bush administration had not gone to war in 2003 and Saddam had remained in power, the U.S. might have felt compelled to do so once Iraq again invaded Kuwait.
In any event, it is one thing to assert, then or now, that the Iraq war was ill-advised. It is quite another to make the horrendous charge that President Bush lied to or deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam.
I recently wrote to Ron Fournier protesting his accusation. His response, in an email, was to reiterate that “an objective reading of the events leads to only one conclusion: the administration . . . misinterpreted, distorted and in some cases lied about intelligence.” Although Mr. Fournier referred to “evidence” supporting his view, he did not cite any—and I do not believe there is any.
He did say correctly that “intelligence is never dispositive; it requires analysis and judgment, with the final call and responsibility resting with the president.” It is thus certainly possible to criticize President Bush for having believed what the CIA told him, although it seems to me that any president would have credited such confident assertions by the intelligence community. But to accuse the president of lying us into war must be seen as not only false, but as dangerously defamatory.
The charge is dangerous because it can take on the air of historical fact—with potentially dire consequences. I am reminded of a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany: that the German army had not really lost World War I, that the soldiers instead had been “stabbed in the back” by politicians.
Sometime in the future, perhaps long after most of us are gone, an American president may need to rely publicly on intelligence reports to support military action. It would be tragic if, at such a critical moment, the president’s credibility were undermined by memories of a false charge peddled by the likes of Ron Fournier.
Mr. Silberman, a senior federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, was co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
We were told there was a nuclear weapons program in Iraq. That turned out to be false.
Iraq's Reconstitution of Its Nuclear Weapons Program
By David Albright and Khidhir Hamza
Iraq has provided few credible indications that its nearly three-decade quest for nuclear weapons has ended. Since its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, however, Iraq has had an extremely difficult time making any progress in building nuclear weapons. The economic sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council after the invasion disrupted many vital imports, particularly for Iraq's uranium enrichment program. The allied bombing campaign destroyed many of its key nuclear facilities.
The subsequent, highly intrusive inspections mandated by the Security Council and carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Action Team in cooperation with the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) exposed and destroyed vast amounts of nuclear equipment and materials. In the process, the inspections uncovered a long-standing and determined clandestine nuclear weapons program, despite Iraqi denials until 1995 that such a program existed. Currently, essentially all of Iraq's pre-Gulf War nuclear facilities and equipment have been eliminated or converted to non-proscribed purposes under periodic Action Team inspections. But Iraq retains its nuclear cadres and its extensive knowledge and experience built up before the Gulf War. Moreover, some key unanswered questions remain about Iraq's effort to build the nuclear weapon itself-called "weaponization" here-and to build a gas centrifuge enrichment program t!!o enrich uranium for weapons purposes.
Since the war, Iraq is suspected of having made progress on a number of bottlenecks in its weapons program, at least those which could be done with little chance of detection by inspectors. These activities include design work, laboratory efforts, subcomponent production, and the operation of test machines. If the inspection system becomes ineffective, Iraq could reconstitute major aspects of its nuclear weapons program that would likely be discovered under the current inspection regime, a combination of historical investigations and an on-going monitoring and verification (OMV) system. Even under the OMV regime, Iraq's illicit acquisition of plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the former Soviet Union would be very difficult to detect. Because of this and other weaknesses, the OMV system needs improvement to be effective in deterring and detecting Iraq's banned activities.
There are few alternatives. A nuclear-armed Iraq would be extremely dangerous. Nuclear weapons would aid Saddam Hussein in ensuring his own survival and increasing his regional power. If he detonated a nuclear explosive underground, the international community, and in particular the United States, may not risk intervention, particularly if definitive information about the size of Iraq's nuclear arsenal is lacking.
Essential to any discussion about about Iraq or the OMV system are estimates of the time needed for Iraq to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. Such an assessment requires a thorough understanding of Iraq's pre-war program and reasonable inferences about its activities after the war. This article attempts to summarize this discussion and outline some of the most important scenarios of how Iraq may reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. In addition, this article looks at a neglected part of the entire inspection process, namely improving methods to reduce the risk posed by the Iraqi nuclear scientists. There is wide agreement about their central importance to any Iraqi attempt to reconstitute its nuclear program. Yet, little has been done to reduce the threat they pose.
...
1981: Israel bombs Baghdad nuclear reactor
The Israelis have bombed a French-built nuclear plant near Iraq's capital, Baghdad, saying they believed it was designed to make nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.
It is the world's first air strike against a nuclear plant.
An undisclosed number of F-15 interceptors and F-16 fighter bombers destroyed the Osirak reactor 18 miles south of Baghdad, on the orders of Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
The army command said all the Israeli planes returned safely.
The 70-megawatt uranium-powered reactor was near completion but had not been stocked with nuclear fuel so there was no danger of a leak, according to sources in the French atomic industry.
...
Yes, it is dangerous. But for dimocraps it's a convenient lie. A lie that Republicans are tired of fighting.
But it's time you realized that's what it is -- Just another lie from the party of lies --
From today's WSJ. I'd post a link, but you'll just run into a subscription wall
The Dangerous Lie That ‘Bush Lied’
Some journalists still peddle this canard as if it were fact. This is defamatory and could end up hurting the country.
President George W. Bush
By
LAURENCE H. SILBERMAN
Feb. 8, 2015 6:25 p.m. ET
In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”
I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction—a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community’s determination that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—I am, therefore, keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the “Bush lied” allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.
The intelligence community’s 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated, in a formal presentation to President Bush and to Congress, its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction—a belief in which the NIE said it held a 90% level of confidence. That is about as certain as the intelligence community gets on any subject.
Recall that the head of the intelligence community, Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, famously told the president that the proposition that Iraq possessed WMD was “a slam dunk.” Our WMD commission carefully examined the interrelationships between the Bush administration and the intelligence community and found no indication that anyone in the administration sought to pressure the intelligence community into its findings. As our commission reported, presidential daily briefs from the CIA dating back to the Clinton administration were, if anything, more alarmist about Iraq’s WMD than the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.
Saddam had manifested sharp hostility toward America, including firing at U.S. planes patrolling the no-fly zone set up by the armistice agreement ending the first Iraq war. Saddam had also attempted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush —a car-bombing plot was foiled—during Mr. Bush’s visit to Kuwait in 1993. But President George W. Bush based his decision to go to war on information about Saddam’s WMD. Accordingly, when Secretary of State Colin Powell formally presented the U.S. case to the United Nations, Mr. Powell relied entirely on that aspect of the threat from Iraq.
Our WMD commission ultimately determined that the intelligence community was “dead wrong” about Saddam’s weapons. But as I recall, no one in Washington political circles offered significant disagreement with the intelligence community before the invasion. The National Intelligence Estimate was persuasive—to the president, to Congress and to the media.
Granted, there were those who disagreed with waging war against Saddam even if he did possess WMD. Some in Congress joined Brent Scowcroft, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and former national security adviser, in publicly doubting the wisdom of invading Iraq. It is worth noting, however, that when Saddam was captured and interrogated, he told his interrogators that he had intended to seek revenge on Kuwait for its cooperation with the U.S. by invading again at a propitious time. This leads me to speculate that if the Bush administration had not gone to war in 2003 and Saddam had remained in power, the U.S. might have felt compelled to do so once Iraq again invaded Kuwait.
In any event, it is one thing to assert, then or now, that the Iraq war was ill-advised. It is quite another to make the horrendous charge that President Bush lied to or deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam.
I recently wrote to Ron Fournier protesting his accusation. His response, in an email, was to reiterate that “an objective reading of the events leads to only one conclusion: the administration . . . misinterpreted, distorted and in some cases lied about intelligence.” Although Mr. Fournier referred to “evidence” supporting his view, he did not cite any—and I do not believe there is any.
He did say correctly that “intelligence is never dispositive; it requires analysis and judgment, with the final call and responsibility resting with the president.” It is thus certainly possible to criticize President Bush for having believed what the CIA told him, although it seems to me that any president would have credited such confident assertions by the intelligence community. But to accuse the president of lying us into war must be seen as not only false, but as dangerously defamatory.
The charge is dangerous because it can take on the air of historical fact—with potentially dire consequences. I am reminded of a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany: that the German army had not really lost World War I, that the soldiers instead had been “stabbed in the back” by politicians.
Sometime in the future, perhaps long after most of us are gone, an American president may need to rely publicly on intelligence reports to support military action. It would be tragic if, at such a critical moment, the president’s credibility were undermined by memories of a false charge peddled by the likes of Ron Fournier.
Mr. Silberman, a senior federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, was co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
We were told there was a nuclear weapons program in Iraq. That turned out to be false.
Iraq did have a nuclear project, which Israel took out. That Iraq had the desire to begin again, was no secret:
Iraq s Reconstitution of Its Nuclear Weapons Program
Iraq's Reconstitution of Its Nuclear Weapons Program
By David Albright and Khidhir Hamza
Iraq has provided few credible indications that its nearly three-decade quest for nuclear weapons has ended. Since its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, however, Iraq has had an extremely difficult time making any progress in building nuclear weapons. The economic sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council after the invasion disrupted many vital imports, particularly for Iraq's uranium enrichment program. The allied bombing campaign destroyed many of its key nuclear facilities.
The subsequent, highly intrusive inspections mandated by the Security Council and carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Action Team in cooperation with the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) exposed and destroyed vast amounts of nuclear equipment and materials. In the process, the inspections uncovered a long-standing and determined clandestine nuclear weapons program, despite Iraqi denials until 1995 that such a program existed. Currently, essentially all of Iraq's pre-Gulf War nuclear facilities and equipment have been eliminated or converted to non-proscribed purposes under periodic Action Team inspections. But Iraq retains its nuclear cadres and its extensive knowledge and experience built up before the Gulf War. Moreover, some key unanswered questions remain about Iraq's effort to build the nuclear weapon itself-called "weaponization" here-and to build a gas centrifuge enrichment program t!!o enrich uranium for weapons purposes.
Since the war, Iraq is suspected of having made progress on a number of bottlenecks in its weapons program, at least those which could be done with little chance of detection by inspectors. These activities include design work, laboratory efforts, subcomponent production, and the operation of test machines. If the inspection system becomes ineffective, Iraq could reconstitute major aspects of its nuclear weapons program that would likely be discovered under the current inspection regime, a combination of historical investigations and an on-going monitoring and verification (OMV) system. Even under the OMV regime, Iraq's illicit acquisition of plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the former Soviet Union would be very difficult to detect. Because of this and other weaknesses, the OMV system needs improvement to be effective in deterring and detecting Iraq's banned activities.
There are few alternatives. A nuclear-armed Iraq would be extremely dangerous. Nuclear weapons would aid Saddam Hussein in ensuring his own survival and increasing his regional power. If he detonated a nuclear explosive underground, the international community, and in particular the United States, may not risk intervention, particularly if definitive information about the size of Iraq's nuclear arsenal is lacking.
Essential to any discussion about about Iraq or the OMV system are estimates of the time needed for Iraq to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. Such an assessment requires a thorough understanding of Iraq's pre-war program and reasonable inferences about its activities after the war. This article attempts to summarize this discussion and outline some of the most important scenarios of how Iraq may reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. In addition, this article looks at a neglected part of the entire inspection process, namely improving methods to reduce the risk posed by the Iraqi nuclear scientists. There is wide agreement about their central importance to any Iraqi attempt to reconstitute its nuclear program. Yet, little has been done to reduce the threat they pose.
...
BBC ON THIS DAY 7 1981 Israel bombs Baghdad nuclear reactor
1981: Israel bombs Baghdad nuclear reactor
The Israelis have bombed a French-built nuclear plant near Iraq's capital, Baghdad, saying they believed it was designed to make nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.
It is the world's first air strike against a nuclear plant.
An undisclosed number of F-15 interceptors and F-16 fighter bombers destroyed the Osirak reactor 18 miles south of Baghdad, on the orders of Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
The army command said all the Israeli planes returned safely.
The 70-megawatt uranium-powered reactor was near completion but had not been stocked with nuclear fuel so there was no danger of a leak, according to sources in the French atomic industry.
...
You and Republicans are different shades of grey. We need a better strategy in the middle east. You two just bicker and point fingers while you follow the same course.
Judging from your statements I can only conclude that you believe nothing of any consequence happened in Iraq before 2008.
The tiny brain of a liberal, there are Republicans and Democrats. I'm not a Democrat, so I'm a Republican. Even when I say you are the same, duh, that's a Republican.
I said we need a better strategy. We should not have invaded Iraq, we should not be in the middle east. We should push energy independence at home so we're not dependent on foreign oil. Then we would not be pulled into the conflicts that we are.
All you offer is what the Republicans do, Democrats are just as militaristic, Obama did nothing different. Iraq as everything to you is just word parsing, re visioning history and finger pointing. It's all you have since you are no different.
If some people had their way we'd still be fighting in Vietnam.
Eee-gads, someone's a bit behind in their history reading. North Vietnam was on the verge of unconditional surrender as a result of Nixon's bombing campaigns. They were almost out of AA missiles and had been decimated by the bombing. This has been profusely documented for at least two decades now. But along came the American Left, especially the news media, to the rescue.
And as for the Korean War, South Korea would today be a part of North Korea if the Left had behaved during the Korean War the way they behaved during the Vietnam War.
It's amusing (and sad) the way that failed middle class voters have tried to soften the blow of their failure. The real question should be: Are the middle class better in any way than before Bush took office. The answer is NO. Bush lied.
Yes, it is dangerous. But for dimocraps it's a convenient lie. A lie that Republicans are tired of fighting.
But it's time you realized that's what it is -- Just another lie from the party of lies --
From today's WSJ. I'd post a link, but you'll just run into a subscription wall
The Dangerous Lie That ‘Bush Lied’
Some journalists still peddle this canard as if it were fact. This is defamatory and could end up hurting the country.
President George W. Bush
By
LAURENCE H. SILBERMAN
Feb. 8, 2015 6:25 p.m. ET
In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”
I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction—a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community’s determination that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—I am, therefore, keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the “Bush lied” allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.
The intelligence community’s 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated, in a formal presentation to President Bush and to Congress, its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction—a belief in which the NIE said it held a 90% level of confidence. That is about as certain as the intelligence community gets on any subject.
Recall that the head of the intelligence community, Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, famously told the president that the proposition that Iraq possessed WMD was “a slam dunk.” Our WMD commission carefully examined the interrelationships between the Bush administration and the intelligence community and found no indication that anyone in the administration sought to pressure the intelligence community into its findings. As our commission reported, presidential daily briefs from the CIA dating back to the Clinton administration were, if anything, more alarmist about Iraq’s WMD than the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.
Saddam had manifested sharp hostility toward America, including firing at U.S. planes patrolling the no-fly zone set up by the armistice agreement ending the first Iraq war. Saddam had also attempted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush —a car-bombing plot was foiled—during Mr. Bush’s visit to Kuwait in 1993. But President George W. Bush based his decision to go to war on information about Saddam’s WMD. Accordingly, when Secretary of State Colin Powell formally presented the U.S. case to the United Nations, Mr. Powell relied entirely on that aspect of the threat from Iraq.
Our WMD commission ultimately determined that the intelligence community was “dead wrong” about Saddam’s weapons. But as I recall, no one in Washington political circles offered significant disagreement with the intelligence community before the invasion. The National Intelligence Estimate was persuasive—to the president, to Congress and to the media.
Granted, there were those who disagreed with waging war against Saddam even if he did possess WMD. Some in Congress joined Brent Scowcroft, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and former national security adviser, in publicly doubting the wisdom of invading Iraq. It is worth noting, however, that when Saddam was captured and interrogated, he told his interrogators that he had intended to seek revenge on Kuwait for its cooperation with the U.S. by invading again at a propitious time. This leads me to speculate that if the Bush administration had not gone to war in 2003 and Saddam had remained in power, the U.S. might have felt compelled to do so once Iraq again invaded Kuwait.
In any event, it is one thing to assert, then or now, that the Iraq war was ill-advised. It is quite another to make the horrendous charge that President Bush lied to or deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam.
I recently wrote to Ron Fournier protesting his accusation. His response, in an email, was to reiterate that “an objective reading of the events leads to only one conclusion: the administration . . . misinterpreted, distorted and in some cases lied about intelligence.” Although Mr. Fournier referred to “evidence” supporting his view, he did not cite any—and I do not believe there is any.
He did say correctly that “intelligence is never dispositive; it requires analysis and judgment, with the final call and responsibility resting with the president.” It is thus certainly possible to criticize President Bush for having believed what the CIA told him, although it seems to me that any president would have credited such confident assertions by the intelligence community. But to accuse the president of lying us into war must be seen as not only false, but as dangerously defamatory.
The charge is dangerous because it can take on the air of historical fact—with potentially dire consequences. I am reminded of a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany: that the German army had not really lost World War I, that the soldiers instead had been “stabbed in the back” by politicians.
Sometime in the future, perhaps long after most of us are gone, an American president may need to rely publicly on intelligence reports to support military action. It would be tragic if, at such a critical moment, the president’s credibility were undermined by memories of a false charge peddled by the likes of Ron Fournier.
Mr. Silberman, a senior federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, was co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
We were told there was a nuclear weapons program in Iraq. That turned out to be false.
Iraq did have a nuclear project, which Israel took out. That Iraq had the desire to begin again, was no secret:
Iraq s Reconstitution of Its Nuclear Weapons Program
Iraq's Reconstitution of Its Nuclear Weapons Program
By David Albright and Khidhir Hamza
Iraq has provided few credible indications that its nearly three-decade quest for nuclear weapons has ended. Since its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, however, Iraq has had an extremely difficult time making any progress in building nuclear weapons. The economic sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council after the invasion disrupted many vital imports, particularly for Iraq's uranium enrichment program. The allied bombing campaign destroyed many of its key nuclear facilities.
The subsequent, highly intrusive inspections mandated by the Security Council and carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Action Team in cooperation with the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) exposed and destroyed vast amounts of nuclear equipment and materials. In the process, the inspections uncovered a long-standing and determined clandestine nuclear weapons program, despite Iraqi denials until 1995 that such a program existed. Currently, essentially all of Iraq's pre-Gulf War nuclear facilities and equipment have been eliminated or converted to non-proscribed purposes under periodic Action Team inspections. But Iraq retains its nuclear cadres and its extensive knowledge and experience built up before the Gulf War. Moreover, some key unanswered questions remain about Iraq's effort to build the nuclear weapon itself-called "weaponization" here-and to build a gas centrifuge enrichment program t!!o enrich uranium for weapons purposes.
Since the war, Iraq is suspected of having made progress on a number of bottlenecks in its weapons program, at least those which could be done with little chance of detection by inspectors. These activities include design work, laboratory efforts, subcomponent production, and the operation of test machines. If the inspection system becomes ineffective, Iraq could reconstitute major aspects of its nuclear weapons program that would likely be discovered under the current inspection regime, a combination of historical investigations and an on-going monitoring and verification (OMV) system. Even under the OMV regime, Iraq's illicit acquisition of plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the former Soviet Union would be very difficult to detect. Because of this and other weaknesses, the OMV system needs improvement to be effective in deterring and detecting Iraq's banned activities.
There are few alternatives. A nuclear-armed Iraq would be extremely dangerous. Nuclear weapons would aid Saddam Hussein in ensuring his own survival and increasing his regional power. If he detonated a nuclear explosive underground, the international community, and in particular the United States, may not risk intervention, particularly if definitive information about the size of Iraq's nuclear arsenal is lacking.
Essential to any discussion about about Iraq or the OMV system are estimates of the time needed for Iraq to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. Such an assessment requires a thorough understanding of Iraq's pre-war program and reasonable inferences about its activities after the war. This article attempts to summarize this discussion and outline some of the most important scenarios of how Iraq may reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. In addition, this article looks at a neglected part of the entire inspection process, namely improving methods to reduce the risk posed by the Iraqi nuclear scientists. There is wide agreement about their central importance to any Iraqi attempt to reconstitute its nuclear program. Yet, little has been done to reduce the threat they pose.
...
BBC ON THIS DAY 7 1981 Israel bombs Baghdad nuclear reactor
1981: Israel bombs Baghdad nuclear reactor
The Israelis have bombed a French-built nuclear plant near Iraq's capital, Baghdad, saying they believed it was designed to make nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.
It is the world's first air strike against a nuclear plant.
An undisclosed number of F-15 interceptors and F-16 fighter bombers destroyed the Osirak reactor 18 miles south of Baghdad, on the orders of Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
The army command said all the Israeli planes returned safely.
The 70-megawatt uranium-powered reactor was near completion but had not been stocked with nuclear fuel so there was no danger of a leak, according to sources in the French atomic industry.
...
In other words Iraq had no nuclear capability for more than twenty years before we invaded. Thanks for pointing that out.
Eisenhower got us involved in the Vietnam war after the French got out, by sending the first "military advisers"..Vietnamn was undermined by liberals. After Tet the Vietcong were a spent force. WIth Johnson's bombing of hte North they were ready to deal. Then the Left raised hell and made up shit and we cut and ran.Yeah, like Korea and Vietnam were mission accomplished too.The once successful iraq. Then Obama cut and ran.You're guy successfully ended a successful Iraq war. You have no leg to stand on.
Leg to stand on about what?
Just like they wanted to do in Iraq. Thank Goodness Bush was made of stronger stuff.
JFK was assassinated by right wing extremists, because he was going to end the Vietnam war.
LBJ was duped by the war mongers, and that's why he refused to run for re-election.
Tricky Dick promised to end the war when he ran for president, but broadened the war also invading Laos. He kept the war going another seven years for the profits of the "industrial military contractors" which Ike warned us about.
And Shrub invaded Iraq for the profits of Cheney's Halliburton. They were both chicken hawks, too cowardly to go fight in the Vietnam war that the right wingers loved.
Someday the cons WILL realize the U.S. is NOT the world dictator, and can't force the will of the right wing extremists on ANY country. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan proved it. Cons never get tired of getting their asses kicked.
After Raygun took Iraq off the terrorist list. Saddam was able to acquire enough nuclear goodies to start a clandestine Manhattan Project style enrichment program. Right under Raygun and Bush (41)'s noses. It wasn't discovered until an analysis of a bombing run during the first Gulf War showed evidence of it. Talk about egg on your face, Ronnie.
Russian Spetsnaz trucked most of Saddam's NBC program across the Syrian border in Lebanon. Bush could have made that public but then the left would have screeched: "then invade Lebanon, not Iraq" like that made any sense. Anybody who voted for either Clinturd or Obozo should be deported.....they have forfeited their right to be American citizens.
You and Republicans are different shades of grey. We need a better strategy in the middle east. You two just bicker and point fingers while you follow the same course.
Judging from your statements I can only conclude that you believe nothing of any consequence happened in Iraq before 2008.
The tiny brain of a liberal, there are Republicans and Democrats. I'm not a Democrat, so I'm a Republican. Even when I say you are the same, duh, that's a Republican.
I said we need a better strategy. We should not have invaded Iraq, we should not be in the middle east. We should push energy independence at home so we're not dependent on foreign oil. Then we would not be pulled into the conflicts that we are.
All you offer is what the Republicans do, Democrats are just as militaristic, Obama did nothing different. Iraq as everything to you is just word parsing, re visioning history and finger pointing. It's all you have since you are no different.
I can't make heads or tails out of this word jumble.
You and Republicans are different shades of grey. We need a better strategy in the middle east. You two just bicker and point fingers while you follow the same course.
Judging from your statements I can only conclude that you believe nothing of any consequence happened in Iraq before 2008.
The tiny brain of a liberal, there are Republicans and Democrats. I'm not a Democrat, so I'm a Republican. Even when I say you are the same, duh, that's a Republican.
I said we need a better strategy. We should not have invaded Iraq, we should not be in the middle east. We should push energy independence at home so we're not dependent on foreign oil. Then we would not be pulled into the conflicts that we are.
All you offer is what the Republicans do, Democrats are just as militaristic, Obama did nothing different. Iraq as everything to you is just word parsing, re visioning history and finger pointing. It's all you have since you are no different.
I can't make heads or tails out of this word jumble.
See your nearest elementary school teacher, maybe they can help
After Raygun took Iraq off the terrorist list. Saddam was able to acquire enough nuclear goodies to start a clandestine Manhattan Project style enrichment program. Right under Raygun and Bush (41)'s noses. It wasn't discovered until an analysis of a bombing run during the first Gulf War showed evidence of it. Talk about egg on your face, Ronnie.
TOTAL GARBAGE...you are not only a liar but a piss poor liar....there was no "terror list" before the first WTC attack you turd....Reagan left office in 1989...a full 4 years before the first WTC bombing and 12 years before 9/11
If some people had their way we'd still be fighting in Vietnam.
Eee-gads, someone's a bit behind in their history reading. North Vietnam was on the verge of unconditional surrender as a result of Nixon's bombing campaigns. They were almost out of AA missiles and had been decimated by the bombing. This has been profusely documented for at least two decades now. But along came the American Left, especially the news media, to the rescue.
And as for the Korean War, South Korea would today be a part of North Korea if the Left had behaved during the Korean War the way they behaved during the Vietnam War.
