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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (101212)	6/11/2003 11:21:46 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Not Buying Revisionist Sales Job on Iraqi Weapons ______________________________ by Jules Witcover Published on Wednesday, June 11, 2003 by the Baltimore Sun WASHINGTON - In a few short months, President Bush has turned from being Paul Revere on the "imminent threat" of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction into a patient teacher of recent history. "Intelligence throughout the decade showed that they had a weapons program," he instructed White House reporters the other day. "I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out they did have a weapons program." Nobody argues, though, with Saddam Hussein having had such weapons in the early 1990s, that he used them against rebellious Kurds and that U.N. inspectors found and directed the destruction of weapons components before they withdrew from Iraq in 1998. So the pertinent question has always been whether, as the Bush administration insisted in launching the invasion, those weapons were in hand and so ready for use as to constitute a clear and present danger requiring immediate military action. Mr. Bush's latest expressions of conviction that the Iraqis had a "weapons program" seemed a distinction and a hedge from his earlier statement on Polish television that "we found the weapons of mass destruction." His reference was to the two mobile facilities suspected of being capable of producing deadly chemical or biological agents. With reporters parsing his words as if he were Bill Clinton playing semantic games over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer found it necessary to say that Mr. Bush, "in saying programs, also applies to weapons," and "that includes everything knowable up to the opening shots of the war." In the absence of the discovery of such weapons, however, the president is now actively engaged in low-balling the WMD rationale for the war. In saying that history will conclude he made the "absolute right decision" in invading Iraq, he is substituting Iraqi "liberation" as his justification, itself a somewhat premature self-congratulation in light of the continued turmoil in the conquered country, including more U.S. military casualties. Although Mr. Bush did emphasize the goal of "regime change" as the invasion approached, the "imminent threat" of weapons of mass destruction was the driving force in the administration's argument that more time could not be afforded U.N. inspectors in their quest for them. Understating the importance of the existence or absence of WMD at the time of the invasion won't settle the critical question of whether administration officials hyped government intelligence about the threat to win congressional support for launching pre-emptive war. Without WMD, what was being pre-empted? E-mails to a columnist are hardly the equivalent of a Gallup poll, but mine have taken an interesting turn in recent weeks, from strong defenses of the president to questions about his rationale for the war. One e-mailer writes: "You ask whether Bush's case was built on deception? Do Marylanders like crab cakes? It is abundantly clear from recent remarks by Secretary [of Defense Donald H.] Rumsfeld that the whole WMD argument was a gigantic hoax and fraud. He is now left to arguing that the Iraqis may have destroyed them. ... These people just lie. Why don't you just come out and say it?" Another asks: "If Bill Clinton was impeached because he lied about having sex with an intern, shouldn't George W. Bush also be impeached for the much more serious lie of inventing the case for war against Iraq out of whole cloth?" And another: "Mr. Bush is a liar. I don't buy the spin that his intelligence was giving him wrong information. The CIA wasn't convinced about Iraq, and we all know how he discredited [U.N. chief inspector Hans] Blix." Finally, another reader writes: "I find it odd that you do not utter the word 'impeach' in your articles. About the missing WMD which were the rationale for going to war in Iraq, Senator [Robert C.] Byrd is right to keep looking at the Constitution. If the Republicans were right to hound and clamor for impeachment of President Clinton because he 'lied' about his personal life, lying about reasons for going to war and putting many lives at risk is so much more egregious and serving of impeachment. Why the silence?" _______________________________________________ Jules Witcover writes from The Sun's Washington bureau. His column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Copyright (c) 2003, The Baltimore Sun commondreams.org

To: Bilow who wrote (101212)	6/11/2003 11:37:36 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Do you admit that the US misplaced chemical weapons, which then went so rusty that they could not be identified, or not? Here's a link: What's to admit or deny?? It's a fact. 109 rounds of 155mm discovered in 1988 on Mbanika Island ... But hey... that's well over 40 years after a MAJOR GLOBAL CONFLICT with 12 million US servicement under arms had ended.. But it's not 6,000 rounds of chemical weapons produced less that 20 year before, obviously maintained and taken care of sufficiently that they maintained some accountability of them (internally), now is it?? And the desert of Iraq is hardly as corrosive to metal as tropical humidity. And btw, did you know that "gopher" one of the first internet "browsers" was developed at INEL?? Hawk