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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (413173)	6/9/2003 10:15:49 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

NEW BUSH LIES: "Bush Shifts 'Weapons' Language" AS, I think you have come up with a terrific analysis of the Bush approach to bamboozling America. Thanks. ***** Bush is getting beat up everywhere in the media now: newsday.com Bush Shifts 'Weapons' Language By Knut Royce Washington Bureau June 9, 2003 Washington -- Faced with the awkward possibility that no significant caches of weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, Bush administration officials are recasting their earlier predictions by insisting evidence will emerge that Saddam Hussein at least had a "program" for such weapons.** Bush used the term "program" in three consecutive sentences on the issue Monday. "Iraq had a weapons program," Bush told reporters. "Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced, with time, we'll find out that they did have a weapons program." And National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, while declaring on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that she believes such weapons will be found, asserted it would take some time "to put together a full picture of his weapons of mass destruction programs." Even intelligence officials are talking more broadly of "programs." On Friday, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Adm. Lowell Jacoby confirmed that a September DIA report found that the agency "had no reliable information" Iraq had chemical weapons. He insisted, though, "such a program existed ... such a program was active such a program was part of the Iraqi WMD infrastructure." Critics contend the word "program" is too imprecise. "It can mean anything," said Mel Goodman, a retired CIA analyst. "It can mean documents, anything; no matter how benign, they will find some various purpose for it." Rice, denying the administration hyped intelligence to rally support for an invasion, also echoed another new administration theme: that what it had said was similar to what the two previous administrations had said, and that all three based their conclusions on what the CIA was telling them. "Successive CIA directors, successive administrations, have known that we had every reason to judge that he had weapons of mass destruction," she said Sunday. Bush repeated that theme Monday when he said the intelligence had changed little throughout the 1990s. Yet W. Patrick Lang, former chief of Middle East intelligence at the DIA, says he believes Hussein at some point during the 1990s may have shelved the weapons program, at least temporarily. "If sanctions were lifted, if he could get out from under the rock, he would probably want to reactivate it," he said. Rice said one of the key documents Bush relied on in assessing conditions in Iraq was a classified report prepared by the intelligence community in October concluding, she said, that Iraq "has weapons of mass destruction." An unclassified CIA public "white paper" derived from that report also concludes Iraq "has chemical and biological weapons" and "has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents." But the section of the report that provides backup for those conclusions does not support them. In more equivocating language, it says Iraq "has the ability to produce chemical warfare agents within its chemical industry." It says Iraq "probably has concealed precursors, production equipment ... and other items necessary for continuing its [chemical warfare] effort" and "probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons" of chemical warfare agents. The September DIA report says the intelligence is even murkier. "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities," according to six paragraphs that were declassified from the approximately 80-page report.

To: American Spirit who wrote (413173)	6/9/2003 10:24:15 PM
From: DavesM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Clinton had the same "fraudulent" intel - and used it. Further, after Saddam's Iraq was caught (and admitted) lying about its WMD program in 1995; the burden of proof changed from the Allies and the UN proving Iraq had disarmed, to Iraq having to prove and provide evidence and documentation that their WMD programs had ended. This change occurred during the Clinton Administration. re:"Gave us fraudulent intel. Told us Saddam was an imminent threat but he went down like a mouse and had now WMD's ready to use, no SCUDS, hardly much at all." Speaking of SCUDS, what happened to the illegal missiles that Iraq admitted to having and began destroying just before the war began? If I remember correctly, they destroyed just a handful (of the number the UN said they had, and they admitted to having).