Certainly closer than the folks you are turning to.
I think it is all pretty much crap, so it is hard to know where to begin.
Let me focus on the issue of threat, and whether or not the Bush people lied:
Regime Change
On October 31, 1998, Iraq ceased all cooperation with UNSCOM.37 The same day President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which declared that "t should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."38 In signing the Act, the President stated that the U.S. "looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life."39
Two week later, November 14, Iraq resumed cooperation with UNSCOM, averting U.S and British air strikes.40
On December 8, National Security Advisor Berger delivered an address at Stanford University on U.S. policy on Iraq. He stated:
"As long as Saddam remains in power and in confrontation with the world, the positive evolution we and so many would like to see in the Middle East is less likely to occur. His Iraq remains a source of potential conflict in the region, a source of inspiration for those who equate violence with power and compromise with surrender, a source of uncertainty for those who would like to see a stable region in which to invest.
"Change inside Iraq is necessary not least because it would help free the Middle East from its preoccupation with security and struggle and survival, and make it easier for its people to focus their energies on commerce and cooperation.
"For the last eight years, American policy toward Iraq has been based on the tangible threat Saddam poses to our security. That threat is clear. Saddam's history of aggression, and his recent record of deception and defiance, leave no doubt that he would resume his drive for regional domination if he had the chance. Year after year, in conflict after conflict, Saddam has proven that he seeks weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, in order to use them."
"We will continue to contain the threat Iraq poses to its region and the world. But for all the reasons I have mentioned, President Clinton has said that over the long-term, the best way to address the challenge Iraq poses is 'through a government in Baghdad - a new government - that is committed to represent and respect its people, not repress them; that is committed to peace in the region.' Our policy toward Iraq today is to contain Saddam, but also to oppose him."41
On December 9, Iraq again resumed obstructing inspection activities and shortly thereafter UNSCOM withdrew inspectors from Iraq.42
Desert Fox and a "threat of the future"
On December 16, 1998, President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a four-day missile and bombing attack on Iraq. "I acted quickly because, as my military advisors stressed, the longer we waited, the more time Saddam would have to disburse his forces and protect his arsenal," Clinton explained in his December 19 radio address to the nation. "Our mission is clear: to degrade Saddam's capacity to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction."43 (It should be noted that on July 27, 2003 President Clinton assessed the effectiveness of Desert Fox. He stated: "When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know." )44
Secretary ALBRIGHT held a briefing on Desert Fox and was asked how she would respond to those who say that unlike the 1991 Gulf War this campaign "looks like mostly an Anglo-American mission." She answered:
"We are now dealing with a threat, I think, that is probably harder for some to understand because it is a threat of the future, rather than a present threat, or a present act such as a border crossing, a border aggression. And here, as the president described in his statement yesterday, we are concerned about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's ability to have, develop, deploy weapons of mass destruction and the threat that that poses to the neighbors, to the stability of the Middle East, and therefore, ultimately to ourselves.45
Secretary Cohen replied much the same way to comments made in March of 1998 by Senator Campbell of Colorado, who chided the administration for not keeping the "coalition together" during an Appropriations Committee hearing. Cohen responded:
And that's one of the reasons why you haven't seen the kind of solidarity that we had before; much harder when the case is the threat of weapons of mass destruction versus Saddam Hussein setting off 600 oil wells in the field of Kuwait and seeing that kind of threat, which is real and tangible, as opposed to one which might take place some time in the future, as far as the use of his chemical and biologicals.46
On December 19, Saddam Hussein declared that inspectors would never be allowed back in Iraq.47 Inspectors wouldn't return to Iraq for five years.
newamericancentury.org
All of you who think that Bush manufactured all of this, or that it was all made up by a cabal of Neoconservatives, simply don't know what you are talking about.
What German intelligence was saying a couple of years ago:
Citing German intelligence estimates, Hamza said Iraq had more than 10 tons of uranium and one ton of slightly enriched uranium. Hamza said that could give Iraq enough weapons-grade uranium to build three nuclear weapons within three years.
archives.cnn.com
Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) may be able to menace Iraq's neighbors with nuclear weapons in three years and fire a missile as far as Europe by 2005, according to a German intelligence assessment made public on Saturday.
The Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has gathered evidence that Baghdad is also stepping up efforts to produce chemical weapons and has increased buying abroad of the inputs needed to make biological weapons.
Details of the assessment were published in German newspapers. A spokesman at the BND's headquarters near Munich confirmed that selected correspondents had been briefed on Iraq by intelligence officials on Friday.
``It is clear that we have suspicions about Iraq,'' the spokesman told Reuters.
nci.org
February 27, 2002
German intelligence and the Iraqi threat
By Reuven Pedatzur
There is scarcely any new information in the report published this week by the German Federal Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), on Iraq's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. An almost identical report was published by the BND precisely a war ago.
The difference between the two reports lies not in the content, but in the timing. It is almost certain that the debriefings top BND officials gave to senior journalists in GERMANY were intended, among other things, to prepare German and European public opinion for a possible American offensive against Iraq.
If the American administration is looking for a way of justifying an attack on Iraq, the German report supplies it with plenty of good reasons. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, nations arming themselves with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are perceived as a definite threat to the survival of Western civilization.
Thus, if there is clear evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, despite his denials, is continuing to arm himself with chemical, biological and - in the near future - nuclear weapons, those efforts must be stopped. The information contained in the German report justifies not only the elimination of Iraq's infrastructure for the manufacture of WMD, but also the toppling of Saddam.
The most serious of the BND's assessments is the one predicting that Saddam will have nuclear weapons within three years. The Germans stress how little time remains to stop Iraq's nuclear armament program. The question whether Iraq has the capability of completing the process of developing nuclear arms within such a short period of time has become irrelevant. What is really important is Saddam's keen motivation to go nuclear, and no one questions the degree of his motivation.
Ever since December 1998, when the last of the United Nations inspectors left Iraq, nobody knows for sure what is going on in Iraq's nuclear development plans. However, the lack of precise intelligence data does not reduce fears that Iraq could succeed with its nuclear project. It should never be forgotten that, before the Gulf War and based on regular visits by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, it was universally believed that Iraq had no intentions of developing nuclear weapons. As a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iraq was praised to the skies. However, after the war, it emerged that the Iraqis were only six months away from completing development of a nuclear bomb.
In a recent interview Khidhir Hamza gave to Newsweek, the senior Iraqi scientist who defected to the West stated: "A minor [uranium] enrichment capability is all that is needed to provide the nuclear core for three weapons." Hamza noted an extensive worldwide network of Iraqi agents who have been successful in obtaining the necessary technology and equipment. "If Russian scientists are employed, Iraq can cut considerably the time needed to produce weapons-grade uranium in large quantities."
The German intelligence experts say that by 2005, Iraq will have ballistic missiles capable of striking Western Europe. The knowledge and experience Iraq has acquired in developing missiles with a range of up to 150 kilometers - with the approval of the UN Security Council - will enable it to soon complete work on the development of missiles with a 3,000-km. range. The combination of a long-range missile and a nuclear warhead will turn Iraq into an immediate threat for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's member-states.
To complete this grim picture, the report's authors estimate that the pace of producing chemical weapons in Iraq has increased significantly and that the Iraqis have the capacity for quickly resuming their manufacture of biological weapons.
In the last few weeks, experts in the American administration are formulating the policy guidelines that the U.S. will rely on in its anticipated move against Iraq. Among the options being considered are an American military invasion of Iraq, support for a local popular uprising and assistance for a insurrection within the Iraqi army.
The leak of the German intelligence report is intended to promote the option involving the use of the U.S. Army to topple Saddam, an option that President George W. Bush favors. The report is meant to soften the opposition of some NATO member-states to an American military operation. From Israel's standpoint, it is a good thing that German intelligence experts are the ones who are pointing to the threat from Baghdad and that they are thus backing the warnings that Jerusalem has been issuing on this matter for the past decade.
mideasttruth.com
I was supplied this a short time ago:
"That came from us"
Information provided by the German Federal Intelligence Service on Iraqi biological weapons has become a political issue: Did the Germans, by providing incorrect information, inadvertently contribute to the outbreak of the war?
This is a sentence that will probably find its way into every history book: "It turns out that we were all wrong." This assessment, reached by former US chief weapons inspector David Kay, has been causing significant problems for US President George W. Bush for months. The inflated story about Saddam's alleged arsenal of horror could be one of the factors that may cost him his reelection.
Another remark Kay made during his testimony before a congressional panel in January has not yet become as widely known: "The Germans and their intelligence services believed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
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Does this mean that key reasons to go to war were supplied by Germany, an opponent of the war? Both the German government and the Federal Intelligence Service, or Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), have been worried about a backlash from Washington for months. On the weekend before last, their fears became reality. Through an article printed in the Los Angeles Times, the US government leaked the information that Berlin allegedly bears a portion of the responsibility for the debacle in Iraq. According to the article, this is because the Germans are principally responsible for the fantastic story of biological weapons laboratories being hidden in mobile containers that the dictator supposedly had driven back and forth across the country in trucks. It was precisely this laboratory for toxic substances that US Secretary of State Colin Powell used as one of his central arguments in attempting to convince the UN Security Council of the dangers posed by Iraq....
spiegel.de |
