Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Rascal who wrote (123806)	1/27/2004 4:25:41 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Let's start here with Kay's own words (and a comment by Powell): Kay: No evidence Iraq stockpiled WMDs Former chief U.S. inspector faults intelligence agencies Monday, January 26, 2004 Posted: 10:55 AM EST (1555 GMT (CNN) -- Two days after resigning as the Bush administration's top weapons inspector in Iraq, David Kay said Sunday that his group found no evidence Iraq had stockpiled unconventional weapons before the U.S.-led invasion in March. He said U.S. intelligence services owe President Bush an explanation for having concluded that Iraq had. "My summary view, based on what I've seen, is we're very unlikely to find large stockpiles of weapons," he said on National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition." "I don't think they exist." It was the consensus among the intelligence agencies that Iraq had such weapons that led Bush to conclude that it posed an imminent threat that justified the U.S.-led invasion, Kay said. "I actually think the intelligence community owes the president rather than the president owing the American people," he said. "We have to remember that this view of Iraq was held during the Clinton administration and didn't change in the Bush administration," Kay said. "It is not a political 'gotcha' issue. It is a serious issue of 'How you can come to a conclusion that is not matched in the future?'" **Other countries' intelligence agencies shared the U.S. conclusion that Iraq had stockpiled such weapons, though most disagreed with the United States about how best to respond.* Powell: Violations justified war Asked if Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States at the time of the invasion, Kay said, "Based on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat." Although his team concluded that Iraq did not possess large amounts of weapons of mass destruction ready for use, that does not necessarily mean it posed no imminent threat, he said. "That is a political judgment, not a technical judgment." Secretary of State Colin Powell defended the administration's moves Sunday. "Military action was justified by Iraq's violation of 12 years of U.N. resolutions," he said in an interview with First Channel Russia during a visit to Moscow. "Iraq had the intent to have weapons of mass destruction and they had previously used weapons of mass destruction. They had programs to develop such weapons," Powell said. "And what we were trying to find out was what inventory they actually had, and we are still examining that question." Saddam Hussein was given the opportunity to divulge what his country was doing but chose not to do so, which resulted in the U.S.-led campaign to oust him, Powell said. "And the world is better off, the Iraqi people are better off, because Saddam Hussein is gone," Powell said. "And we will continue to make sure we find all elements of his weapons of mass destruction programs and whatever weapons there might be." Powell made the Bush administration's case that Saddam's regime possessed such weapons in a presentation to the U.N. Security Council last year. Other failures The discovery that Iran and Libya had nuclear programs also appears to have caught intelligence agencies by surprise, Kay said. The Iranian program was uncovered not by intelligence agencies but by Iranian defectors, he said. Libya's program contained a number of international clues, such as a connection to Pakistan and plants in Malaysia. "It was, in many ways, the biggest surprise of all, and it was missed," Kay said. Last June, when he was appointed to lead the U.S. effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Kay expressed confidence they would be found. Despite his group's failure to unearth such weapons, those predictions have not embarrassed him, he said. "They're coming back to haunt me in the sense of why could we all be so wrong? ... It's an issue of the capabilities of one's intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information." Kay said he would not submit a final report on his work in Iraq, since the task of searching for weapons will continue, led by Charles Duelfer, a longtime weapons inspector who replaces Kay as the new CIA special adviser. (Full story) Despite not finding any WMD, Kay said his team found that the Iraqi senior leadership "had an intention to continue to pursue their WMD activities. That they, in fact, had a large number of WMD-related activities."** Kay predicted investigators would find that Iraqi scientists were "working on developing weapons or weapons concepts that they had not moved into actual production." Kay alleges Syria connection Kay also raised the possibility -- one he first discussed in a weekend interview with "The Sunday Telegraph" of London -- that clues about banned weapons programs might reside across Iraq's western border. "There is ample evidence of movement to Syria before the war -- satellite photographs, reports on the ground of a constant stream of trucks, cars, rail traffic across the border. We simply don't know what was moved," Kay said. But, he said, "the Syrian government there has shown absolutely no interest in helping us resolve this issue." Kay acknowledged that the truth might never be revealed. Widespread looting in Baghdad after the invasion destroyed many government records. "There's always going to be unresolved ambiguity here." Kay said he resigned after his resources were diverted to other work from the exclusive goal of searching for unconventional weapons. "It's very hard to run organizations with multiple missions, particularly if one half is controlled by the Defense Department and one half is controlled by the CIA. ... I thought that was the wrong thing to do." Kay said he would like to write a book dealing with the issue of proliferation and intelligence. "I'm not doing a Paul O'Neill," he said, referring to the former Bush treasury secretary who was the primary source for "The Price of Loyalty," a recent book that said the Bush administration was planning to invade Iraq almost from the time Bush took office. cnn.com

To: Rascal who wrote (123806)	1/27/2004 4:48:21 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

And here are the actual words where David Kay alleges that Iraqi scientists were involved in scamming Saddam out of money in questionable WMD programs: Bush's decision on war affirmed By James G. Lakely THE WASHINGTON TIMES A former weapons inspector's prediction that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) will never be found in Iraq doesn't invalidate President Bush's decision to go to war, the White House said yesterday. David Kay, who resigned Friday as the lead weapons inspector in postwar Iraq, said over the weekend that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein posed an "imminent threat" to the United States, but he is "personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction." Those comments have prompted Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican, to invite Mr. Kay to testify in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee tomorrow. A U.S. intelligence official yesterday warned against reading Mr. Kay's comments and jumping to conclusions. "The search continues," the official said. "We believe it's premature to reach any judgments. There's plenty of work to be done on the ground." Mr. Kay told the New York Times that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was attempting to reconstitute his fledgling nuclear program as late as 2001, and had an active program to use the deadly chemical ricin as a weapon until he was stopped by the U.S.-led invasion in March. In an interview with National Public Radio, Mr. Kay echoed the Bush administration's claim that "in the shadowing effect of September 11," the president was right to "recalculate what risk [Saddam posed] based on the intelligence that existed." "I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat," Mr. Kay said, adding that "what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war." Mr. Kay told the New York Times that a "vortex of corruption" overtook the community of Iraqi weapons scientists to the point that *Saddam* — as well as Western intelligence agencies — were fooled into thinking that he had a growing stockpile of chemical and biological weapons. Mr. Kay also told the London Telegraph newspaper that he uncovered evidence that components of Saddam's WMD program was spirited to Syria shortly before the war began. "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD program. Precisely what went to Syria and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved." White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday that Mr. Kay's comments wholly justify the president's decision to depose Saddam by force because he was a "dangerous and gathering threat." "In reference to what Dr. Kay said, what we know today only reconfirms that the president made the right decision," Mr. McClellan said. "The world is a safer and better place, and America is more secure because of the actions that we took." Democrats held up some of Mr. Kay's comments to hammer the president on his decision to go to war. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts said on "Fox News Sunday" that Mr. Kay's opinion "confirms what I have said for a long period of time, that we were misled... in the way the president took us to war." Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean yesterday said the White House "has not been candid with the American people about virtually anything with the Iraq war." Recent polling shows that Democratic criticism of the war is having little effect on public opinion. In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Jan. 15, 59 percent of respondents said that "all in all" the liberation of Iraq "was worth it." washtimes.com

To: Rascal who wrote (123806)	1/28/2004 11:02:38 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Leak Against This War ____________________ By Daniel Ellsberg commondreams.org Posted 1/27/2004 2:01:00 PM Daniel Ellsberg's well earned credibility, experience and integrity have made him a leading veterans voice on issues of war. His writings are always welcome here at VCS. Leak Against This War US And British Officials Must Expose Their Leaders' Lies About Iraq - As I Did Over Vietnam by Daniel Ellsberg After 17 months observing pacification efforts in Vietnam as a state department official, I laid eyes upon an unmistakable enemy for the first time on New Year's Day in 1967. I was walking point with three members of a company from the US army's 25th Division, moving through tall rice, the water over our ankles, when we heard firing close behind us. We spun around, ready to fire. I saw a boy of about 15, wearing nothing but ragged black shorts, crouching and firing an AK-47 at the troops behind us. I could see two others, heads just above the top of the rice, firing as well. They had lain there, letting us four pass so as to get a better shot at the main body of troops. We couldn't fire at them, because we would have been firing into our own platoon. But a lot of its fire came back right at us. Dropping to the ground, I watched this kid firing away for 10 seconds, till he disappeared with his buddies into the rice. After a minute the platoon ceased fire in our direction and we got up and moved on. About an hour later, the same thing happened again; this time I only saw a glimpse of a black jersey through the rice. I was very impressed, not only by their tactics but by their performance. One thing was clear: these were local boys. They had the advantage of knowing every ditch and dyke, every tree and blade of rice and piece of cover, like it was their own backyard. Because it was their backyard. No doubt (I thought later) that was why they had the nerve to pop up in the midst of a reinforced battalion and fire away with American troops on all sides. They thought they were shooting at trespassers, occupiers, that they had a right to be there and we didn't. This would have been a good moment to ask myself if they were wrong, and if we had a good enough reason to be in their backyard to be fired at. Later that afternoon, I turned to the radio man, a wiry African American kid who looked too thin to be lugging his 75lb radio, and asked: "By any chance, do you ever feel like the redcoats?" Without missing a beat he said, in a drawl: "I've been thinking that ... all ... day." You couldn't miss the comparison if you'd gone to grade school in America. Foreign troops far from home, wearing helmets and uniforms and carrying heavy equipment, getting shot at every half-hour by non-uniformed irregulars near their own homes, blending into the local population after each attack. I can't help but remember that afternoon as I read about US and British patrols meeting rockets and mines without warning in the cities of Iraq. As we faced ambush after ambush in the countryside, we passed villagers who could have told us we were about to be attacked. Why didn't they? First, there was a good chance their friends and family members were the ones doing the attacking. Second, we were widely seen by the local population not as allies or protectors - as we preferred to imagine - but as foreign occupiers. Helping us would have been seen as collaboration, unpatriotic. Third, they knew that to collaborate was to be in danger from the resistance, and that the foreigners' ability to protect them was negligible. There could not be a more exact parallel between this situation and Iraq. Our troops in Iraq keep walking into attacks in the course of patrols apparently designed to provide "security" for civilians who, mysteriously, do not appear the slightest bit inclined to warn us of these attacks. This situation - as in Vietnam - is a harbinger of endless bloodletting. I believe American and British soldiers will be dying, and killing, in that country as long as they remain there. As more and more US and British families lose loved ones in Iraq - killed while ostensibly protecting a population that does not appear to want them there - they will begin to ask: "How did we get into this mess, and why are we still in it?" And the answers they find will be disturbingly similar to those the American public found for Vietnam. I served three US presidents - Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - who lied repeatedly and blatantly about our reasons for entering Vietnam, and the risks in our staying there. For the past year, I have found myself in the horrifying position of watching history repeat itself. I believe that George Bush and Tony Blair lied - and continue to lie - as blatantly about their reasons for entering Iraq and the prospects for the invasion and occupation as the presidents I served did about Vietnam. By the time I released to the press in 1971 what became known as the Pentagon Papers - 7,000 pages of top-secret documents demonstrating that virtually everything four American presidents had told the public about our involvement in Vietnam was false - I had known that pattern as an insider for years, and I knew that a fifth president, Richard Nixon, was following in their footsteps. In the fall of 2002, I hoped that officials in Washington and London who knew that our countries were being lied into an illegal, bloody war and occupation would consider doing what I wish I had done in 1964 or 1965, years before I did, before the bombs started to fall: expose these lies, with documents. I can only admire the more timely, courageous action of Katherine Gun, the GCHQ translator who risked her career and freedom to expose an illegal plan to win official and public support for an illegal war, before that war had started. Her revelation of a classified document urging British intelligence to help the US bug the phones of all the members of the UN security council to manipulate their votes on the war may have been critical in denying the invasion a false cloak of legitimacy. That did not prevent the aggression, but it was reasonable for her to hope that her country would not choose to act as an outlaw, thereby saving lives. She did what she could, in time for it to make a difference, as indeed others should have done, and still can. I have no doubt that there are thousands of pages of documents in safes in London and Washington right now - the Pentagon Papers of Iraq - whose unauthorized revelation would drastically alter the public discourse on whether we should continue sending our children to die in Iraq. That's clear from what has already come out through unauthorized disclosures from many anonymous sources and from officials and former officials such as David Kelly and US ambassador Joseph Wilson, who revealed the falsity of reports that Iraq had pursued uranium from Niger, which President Bush none the less cited as endorsed by British intelligence in his state of the union address before the war. Both Downing Street and the White House organized covert pressure to punish these leakers and to deter others, in Dr Kelly's case with tragic results. Those who reveal documents on the scale necessary to return foreign policy to democratic control risk prosecution and prison sentences, as Katherine Gun is now facing. I faced 12 felony counts and a possible sentence of 115 years; the charges were dismissed when it was discovered that White House actions aimed at stopping further revelations of administration lying had included criminal actions against me. Exposing governmental lies carries a heavy personal risk, even in our democracies. But that risk can be worthwhile when a war's-worth of lives is at stake. · Daniel Ellsberg is the author of 'Secrets: a Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers'.