Why isn't there more talk of the smoking gun memo?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe


Sure it was weasle words doesn't mean that he stated Iraq was complicit in 9/11.

Sure he probably allowed the greater public to foster misconceptions about Iraq's involvedment or lack thereof in 9/11 but that is a far cry from stating it definitively.

Lastly sure he did esure that some link was made in order to pressure the Senate to back the resolution for fear of being the lone Senator who wouldn't fight terrorism. BUT that is still far different then saying Iraq played a role in 9/11.

So your example of Bush stating Iraq had a role in 9/11 still falls short.

Boris never said Bush said anything to link them, Bush never did, the admin. knew sucha lie was too blatant and that even the pliant press might catch them. But the administration did insinuate a link, as Boris showed with the playing up of a supposed Prague meeting between Iraqi intelligence and Ata.

Everyone was told right after 9/11 that almost all the hijackers were Saudis. How the hell do you think it then got to the point that a significant portion of the population began to believe several of the hijackers were Iraqi's right as we are about to invade Iraq??

You honestly think that connection was made in people's minds automatically?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by GePap


Boris never said Bush said anything to link them, Bush never did, the admin. knew sucha lie was too blatant and that even the pliant press might catch them. But the administration did insinuate a link, as Boris showed with the playing up of a supposed Prague meeting between Iraqi intelligence and Ata.

Not really, because Boris did in fact say Bush said exactly that.

Boris said in fact:

So he's claiming we must attack Iraq because they planned, authorized, committed or aided the attacks. None of which are true, we now know.

And said so in support of stated claims by Oerdin that specifically stated Bush claimed Sadaam was behind 9/11. Namely:

Bush publically claimed there were vast quantities of WMD in Iraq, that Saddam was behind 9/11, and that Saddam would give WMD's to Al Qaeda. All three of those claims were the exact opposite of the British and American intell reports which were given to Bush. If that isn't making stuff up I don't know what is.

So in both instances the original claim and the supported claim (in a quite unsuccessful attempt to debunk Ming's point I might add) by Boris clearly indicate that Bush stated Sadaam/Iraq were involved directly in 9/11 when he in no way did.

I freely admit he (meaning Bush) did not bother to correct misconceptions, but was it the administration who initially fostered those misconceptions? Heck I can't recall but I don't seem to recall it that way. Moreso it was a rabid mob reaction if I can recall correctly. Did they use it to their advantage? DUHHH!

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
I freely admit he did not bother to correct misconceptions, but was it the administration who initially fostered those misconceptions? Heck I can't recall but I don't seem to recall it that way. Moreso it was a rabid mob reaction if I can recall correctly. Did they use it to their advantage? DUHHH!

How the hell do you think that misconception was born??

9/11 happens, then we find out most hijackers are saudis, then we go to war in Afghanistan. OK, then comes the "Axis of Evil" speech in January 2002. Hmm, why all of a sudden, in January of 2002, 3 months after 9/11 the administration is now talking about Iraq, Iran, and NK, as opposed to AQ as the greta danger? Then by the middle of 2002 the amdin. is in full swing, saying they know Saddam has a nuclear program (doyou think that was not an outright lie, to state you "know" they have a nuclear program?) and the great danger they will pass WMD's to terrorist... Using a falsehood already out there and fostering and helping it grow is just as bad as inventing it in the first place. You may not be responsible for the first seedling, but you are responsible for the huge crop, and what we sow from it.

I first saw the "Iraq" "AQ" connection from Neo-Con allies like Safire in the Times, and bozo outfits like the Enquirer claiming the whole anthrax scare was using Iraqi anthrax. But as Boris has alrady said, some in the amdin. specially Cheney's outfit played up whatever connection they could between the two constantly, specially the Prague meeting (which Safire first reported IIRC).

The admin. took lies its allies were making and gave them as much creedence as possible, let them get out there in the right wing echo chamber so that people began building the connection, a connection the admin. began to foster in January of 2002 already, by deciding, just 3 months after 9/11 that the true enemies were Iraq, Iran, and NK, not AQ.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

GePap we're saying the same thing. Fostering them through inuendo though is not the same thing as has been stated in these threads that Bush and co. stated for the record that Iraq was responsible for acts of 9/11.

AS for:

Using a falsehood already out there and fostering and helping it grow is just as bad as inventing it in the first place. You may not be responsible for the first seedling, but you are responsible for the huge crop, and what we sow from it.

On the one hand if one knows definitively that it is a lie then yes the above holds true. If one holds out hope that a hithertofor linkage yet may be discovered because of the sorry state of past intelligence and the hope that better intelligence will prove otherwise then I would say it is more irresponsible than out and out disingenuous.

Regardless, in either situation the buck stops at Bush and Co. but definitive claims of knowingly falsifying of intelligence data fall short of the mark.

As for the axis of evil speech, how was it that since three nations were targeted Iraq, Iran, and NK that it was only Iraq that was felt to be complicit in 9/11? If the tarring of the three was a pivotal point in making Iraq seemingly 9/11 responsible why didn't the other 2 gtet painted in the same light.

The answer was b/c the connection was NOT made to AQ or 9/11, but morevoer was done to highlight 3 rogue nations who supposedly were embarking on WMD programs and the possible proliferation thereof in black market arenas regardless of ties/sales to AQ but moreso to terrorists in general.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by GePap


Hmm, why all of a sudden, in January of 2002, 3 months after 9/11 the administration is now talking about Iraq, Iran, and NK, as opposed to AQ as the greta danger?

Thats a great question. Personally my thoughts are since the big fish got away in Afghanistan, Bush and Co. felt the need to do something/anything. (It was midterms afterall. ) They saw the opportunity to take out the scum Sadaam and moved forward using what was thought by all to be a given (in the words of Tennet a slam dunk) as a key point in their pretexts for war. Namely everyone thought Sadaam was hiding something so it made it easy. Nothing new here all that is being described in the DS memo fits.

Further the more true behind closed door reasons for the invasion I do not know but clearly suspect the influences of neocon mentality of draing swamps and setting up democracies for domino effect in the ME probably are closer to the mark. And in Neocon fashion, they probably truely felt that by doing so, it would lessen the potential breeding grounds for future terrorist once that democracy took root and spread throughout the ME.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe

As for the axis of evil speech, how was it that since three nations were targeted Iraq, Iran, and NK that it was only Iraq that was felt to be complicit in 9/11? If the tarring of the three was a pivotal point in making Iraq seemingly 9/11 responsible why didn't the other 2 gtet painted in the same light.

Because it is extremely diffciult to link a Northeast Asian Communist Dictatorship to a bunch of Islamist Terrorists, and because the one we planned to hit was Iraq, NOT Iran, because Iran is much bigger and difficult and in much better world diplomatic standing than Iraq. Iraq was the easy target. If the admin. had chosen Iran as the first target, you would have seen the link made.

The answer was b/c the connection was NOT made to AQ or 9/11, but morevoer was done to highlight 3 rogue nations who supposedly were embarking on WMD programs and the possible proliferation thereof in black market arenas regardless of ties/sales to AQ but moreso to terrorists in general.

Which is crap because NK and Iran (and Syria) all already have WMD capabilities and have for a decade.

That the focus became that so soon to me shows that AQ and terrorism itself became solely a convinient talking point to carry out other agendas, which makes perverted sense since a war on terrorism is an idiotic idea itself.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

My bad, Gepap when I say embarking on WMD I was speaking directly towards Nukes. From my own internal perspective I typically discount chemical and bio weapons as WMDs although I know I shouldn't.

[Dauphin]

NK has nukes, or was that discounted too and nobody told me?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

They supposedly did not as of 2002 when the axis of evil speech was made.

[Dauphin]

So wouldn't NK have been the better choice then?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

In hindsight probably, but we Americans had a special hatred reserved for Sadaam that made the case easier. Now if only Stone and Parker had released "Team America' earlier, problem solved.

[Dinner]

Not Americans but George Bush himself had it in for Saddam because he blamed Saddam for the end of his father's presidency and he wanted to get even with Saddam for trying to assassinate his father. George Bush said as much during a television interview when he was gov of Texas.


The series of Downing Street Memos (now dozens of them have been uncovered by the British press) all show Bush had a hard on for Saddam for the very bigging of his term in office before 9/11 and that the administration was highly active in trying to push the Saddam did 9/11 lie, the Saddam has huge amounts of WMD lie, and the Saddam will give WMD to Islamists who want to kill him lie. In short Bush was lying about a great many things.

[Dinner]

WMD claims were 'totally implausible'

Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday June 20, 2005

A key Foreign Office diplomat responsible for liaising with UN inspectors says today that claims the government made about Iraq's weapons programme were "totally implausible".

He tells the Guardian: "I'd read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there's no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues knew that, too".

Carne Ross, who was a member of the British mission to the UN in New York during the run-up to the invasion, resigned from the FO last year, after giving evidence to the Butler inquiry.

He thought about publishing his testimony because he felt so angry. But he was warned that if he did he might be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.

"There was a very good alternative to war that was never properly pursued, which was to close down Saddam's sources of illegal revenue", he says.

Mr Ross also says sanctions imposed against Iraq were wrong. "They did immeasurable damage to the Iraqi civilian population. We were conscious of that but we did too little to address it", he says.

Earlier, after the September 11 attacks on the US, Mr Ross spent six weeks in Afghanistan negotiating with warlords. "The allies didn't understand Afghanistan," he says. "They didn't have sufficient forces on the ground, were trapped in their fortified compounds, naive about the the willingness of the warlords to cede power, and were far too optimistic that opium production could be curtailed."

Mr Ross has set up a consultancy and advisory service, Independent Diplomat, and wants to raise awareness about the plight of the Saharawi people, displaced by Morocco from Western Sahara in defiance of the UN security council.

He plans to visit the 150,000 refugees from Western Sahara encamped across the border in northwest Algeria. "British policy is to do nothing because British interests dictate that fairly minuscule trade with Morocco is more important," he said.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1510259,00.html

[Dinner]

One of the dozens of new memo's to come out was a memo from 2002 which dealt with the Bush Administration's dramatic ramp up of air attacks on Iraq in 2002 when the Bush Administration said it hadn't decided to go to war. Attacks by US planes went from one or two per month to hundreds per month and the British foreign office was trying to get the US to stop because the attacks because they were illegal.

bombing raids were illegal, says Foreign Office
Michael Smith
A SHARP increase in British and American bombing raids on Iraq in the run-up to war “to put pressure on the regime” was illegal under international law, according to leaked Foreign Office legal advice.

The advice was first provided to senior ministers in March 2002. Two months later RAF and USAF jets began “spikes of activity” designed to goad Saddam Hussein into retaliating and giving the allies a pretext for war.

The Foreign Office advice shows military action to pressurise the regime was “not consistent with” UN law, despite American claims that it was.

The decision to provoke the Iraqis emerged in leaked minutes of a meeting between Tony Blair and his most senior advisers — the so-called Downing Street memo published by The Sunday Times shortly before the general election.

Democratic congressmen claimed last week the evidence it contains is grounds for impeaching President George Bush.

Those at the meeting on July 23, 2002, included Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The minutes quote Hoon as saying that the US had begun spikes of activity to put pressure on the regime.

Ministry of Defence figures for bombs dropped by the RAF on southern Iraq, obtained by the Liberal Democrats through Commons written answers, show the RAF was as active in the bombing as the Americans and that the “spikes” began in May 2002.

However, the leaked Foreign Office legal advice, which was also appended to the Cabinet Office briefing paper for the July meeting, made it clear allied aircraft were legally entitled to patrol the no-fly zones over the north and south of Iraq only to deter attacks by Saddam’s forces on the Kurdish and Shia populations.

The allies had no power to use military force to put pressure of any kind on the regime.

The increased attacks on Iraqi installations, which senior US officers admitted were designed to “degrade” Iraqi air defences, began six months before the UN passed resolution 1441, which the allies claim authorised military action. The war finally started in March 2003.

This weekend the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Goodhart, vice-president of the International Commission of Jurists and a world authority on international law, said the intensified raids were illegal if they were meant to pressurise the regime.

He said UN Resolution 688, used by the allies to justify allied patrols over the no-fly zones, was not adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which deals with all matters authorising military force.

“Putting pressure on Iraq is not something that would be a lawful activity,” said Goodhart, who is also the Liberal Democrat shadow Lord Chancellor.

The Foreign Office advice noted that the Americans had “on occasion” claimed that the allied aircraft were there to enforce compliance with resolutions 688 and 687, which ordered Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.

“This view is not consistent with resolution 687, which does not deal with the repression of the Iraqi civilian population, or with resolution 688, which was not adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and does not contain any provision for enforcement,” it said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1660300,00.html

[Dinner]

Finally we are beginning to see a few brave Republicans stand up and say that George Bush is a liar and that his policies are bad for America. (Hagel - WH "completely disconnected from reality")

Hit by friendly fire

With his polls down, Bush takes flak on Iraq from a host of critics--including some in his own party
By Kevin Whitelaw

Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He's upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He's also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes." "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

That's strikingly blunt talk from a member of the president's party, even one cast as something of a pariah in the GOP because of his early skepticism about the war. "I got beat up pretty good by my own party and the White House that I was not a loyal Republican," he says. Today, he notes, things are changing: "More and more of my colleagues up here are concerned."

Indeed, there are signs that the politics of the Iraq war are being reshaped by the continuing tide of bad news. Take this month in Iraq, with 47 U.S. troops killed in the first 15 days. That's already five more than the toll for the entire month of June last year. With the rate of insurgent attacks near an all-time high and the war's cost set to top $230 billion, more politicians on both sides of the aisle are responding to opinion polls that show a growing number of Americans favoring a withdrawal from Iraq. Republican Sens. Lincoln Chafee and Lindsey Graham have voiced their concerns. And two Republicans, including the congressman who brought "freedom fries" to the Capitol, even joined a pair of Democratic colleagues in sponsoring a bill calling for a troop withdrawal plan to be drawn up by year's end. "I feel confident that the opposition is going to build," says Rep. Ron Paul, the other Republican sponsor and a longtime opponent of the war.

Sagging polls. The measure is not likely to go anywhere, but Hagel calls it "a major crack in the dike." Whether or not that's so, the White House has reason to worry that the assortment of critiques of Bush's wartime performance may be approaching a tipping point. Only 41 percent of Americans now support Bush's handling of the Iraq war, the lowest mark ever in the Associated Press-Ipsos poll. And the Iraq news has combined with a lethargic economy and doubts about the president's Social Security proposals to push Bush's overall approval ratings near all-time lows. For now, most Republicans remain publicly loyal to the White House. "Why would you give your enemies a timetable?" asks House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "(Bush) doesn't fight the war on news articles or television or on polls."

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050627/27bush.htm