SI
SI
discoversearch

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: Neocon who wrote (138979)7/6/2004 8:00:39 PM
From: GST  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 281500
 
<Although not specifically authorized by the UN, it was also not specifically forbidden.> The policy of unilateral preemptive war was most certainly not authorized by the UN -- the US made a point of not taking a war resolution to the Security Council when it became crystal clear that they would lose the vote and lose it badly. The US did not act on behalf of anybody but the USA. As for the threat, Bush et al did used every trick they could muster to scare people into believing that the threat absolutely must be dealt with immediately -- that it was an "imminent" threat. Weapons inspectors did a masterful and heroic job of disarming Iraq -- the US merely rolled in the tanks and crushed a feeble government and kept troops there to watch over the looting.



To: Neocon who wrote (138979)7/6/2004 8:14:28 PM
From: GST  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 281500
 
Cheney Had No New Data on Saddam, Al Qaeda-Panel

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Sept. 11 commission, which reported no evidence of collaborative links between Iraq (news - web sites) and al Qaeda, said on Tuesday that Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) had no more information than commission investigators to support his later assertions to the contrary.

Reuters Photo

The 10-member bipartisan panel investigating the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington said it reached its conclusion after reviewing available transcripts of Cheney's public remarks on the subject.

The vice president has asserted long-standing links between the former Iraqi president and Osama Bin Laden's Islamist militant network.

"The 9-11 Commission believes it has access to the same information the vice president has seen regarding contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq prior to the 9-11 attacks," the commission said in a statement.

The vice president's office had no immediate comment. Nor were commission Chairman Thomas Kean or Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton available to elaborate on the panel's statement.

Al Qaeda is blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed about 3,000 people and prompted President Bush (news - web sites) to launch his war on terrorism with an invasion that ousted Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s former Taliban regime.

Assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and could be prepared to provide chemical or biological agents to al Qaeda for attacks on the United States were a main justification for Bush's decision to invade and occupy Iraq.

No such weapons have been found, and recent opinion polls have suggested growing public skepticism about the Bush administration's reasons for launching a war in which 870 U.S. soldiers have died and nearly 5,400 have been wounded.

The commission called White House claims about links between Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and al Qaeda into question on June 11 with a staff report that found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between the Iraqi leader and al Qaeda before the day of the attacks.

But Bush and his top aides stood firm, with Cheney forcefully maintaining that evidence depicting an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks may yet emerge.

"The notion that there is no relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda just simply is not true," the vice president said in an interview with CNBC.

The New York Times later reported that Kean and Hamilton hoped to see any additional information Cheney had on the subject.

As part of the White House reaction to the Sept. 11 commission's report, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) who said she believed the panel was actually denying that Saddam had control over al Qaeda. Kean and Hamilton flatly rejected her interpretation.

story.news.yahoo.com