ADK_Forever

From: Lie By Lie

Below is #10. Check out the link for 1 - 9.

10) On the reason for invading Iraq

Turning to Iraq, Jonathan Karl said, "You probably saw -- Karl Rove last week said that if the intelligence had been correct, we probably would not have gone to war," and Cheney responded, "I disagree with that. I think the -- as I look at the intelligence with respect to Iraq, what they got wrong was that there weren't any stockpiles. What we found in the after-action reports after the intelligence report was done and then various special groups went and looked at the intelligence and what its validity was, what they found was that Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feedstocks. They also found that he had every intention of resuming production once the international sanctions were lifted."

THE LIE: Brazen to the end, Cheney has clung to the WMD deception as though it had ever been anything other than an excuse for regime change following the illegal invasion of a sovereign country, driven by a deranged desire to gain geopolitical supremacy and establish an ill-defined facsimile of the American political and economic system in the heart of the Middle East.

No one credible agrees with Cheney's assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities -- or his intentions -- and in addition, of course, Cheney has a colourful and reprehensible record of bullying the intelligence agencies into finding reasons to invade Iraq, and promoting the fiction that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain "yellowcake" uranium ore from Niger.

Moreover, two of Cheney's particular enthusiasms -- the torture of prisoners, and the invasion of Iraq -- came together when Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the head of the Khaldan military training camp in Afghanistan (which had little connection with al-Qaeda) was captured and sent to Egypt to be tortured, where he made a false confession that Saddam Hussein had offered to train two al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi later recanted his confession, but not until Secretary of State Colin Powell -- to his eternal shame -- has used the story in February 2003 in an attempt to persuade the UN to support the invasion of Iraq.

This, of course, is disturbing enough, but as David Rose explained in an article in Vanity Fair that coincided with Cheney's recent ABC News interview, al-Libi was not the only torture victim spouting nonsense about Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

According to two senior intelligence analysts, Abu Zubaydah, the facilitator for the Khaldan camp, who, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was subjected to torture -- including waterboarding -- also made a number of false confessions about connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, beyond one ludicrous claim which was subsequently leaked by the administration: that Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were working with Saddam Hussein to destabilize the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. One of the analysts, who worked at the Pentagon, explained, "The intelligence community was lapping this up, and so was the administration, obviously. Abu Zubaydah was saying Iraq and al-Qaeda had an operational relationship. It was everything the administration hoped it would be."

However, none of the analysts knew that these confessions had been obtained through torture. The Pentagon analyst told David Rose, "As soon as I learned that the reports had come from torture, once my anger had subsided I understood the damage it had done. I was so angry, knowing that the higher-ups in the administration knew he was tortured, and that the information he was giving up was tainted by the torture, and that it became one reason to attack Iraq." He added, "It seems to me they were using torture to achieve a political objective."

This is the end, for now, of my tour through the dark, unjust and counter-productive world fashioned by Dick Cheney and his colleagues and close advisers in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, but I hope -- as disturbing rumors begin to swirl -- that it serves to confirm how a Presidential pardon for the Vice President would, effectively, be an endorsement for some of the cruellest manfestations of unfettered executive power and disdain for the rule of law that the United States has ever experienced.

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Thank You Barack Obama for Restoring Honor To The Presidency.
President Obama will rank as one of our greatest presidents!

GOP Socialist Soldier

Biden claims him and Obama will be looking forward and any investigations dealing with illegal or criminal deeds or activities done during the Bush executive order war are the past. Funny, no one used that excuse during the Nuremberg Trials.

bhkad

Based on what information you have it's reasonable to assume what you have. But you are operating without important pieces of the puzzle. I'm too tired to do it right now but I intend to provide at least two crucial pieces of the puzzle that will make the administration's actions not only make sense but seem wise and noble.

Given the circumstances you'd do the same as they did but you might have been tempted to spell it out to the world. Bushco just chose to keep it secret.

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OBL 11/24/02

Billo_Really

I've already debunked everything you intend to say.

I did it right here.

It's lengthy. Took me 4-5 whole posts to get it all. But it is most of the Lie-by-Lie article, with my comments on each, debunking what you are too tired to provide at this time.

Billo_Really

At least they had a trial.

I doubt if Bush/Cheney will ever see the inside of a courtroom.

bhkad

The President is aware of information that we aren't and it is this information that goes into his decision making. Not even the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee is privvy to some of the information the President has.

But here is what we know and can surmise:

What We Know And Can Surmise About The Invasion of Iraq

Let us take an imaginary leap of fancy to suppose that Bushco was "chafing" to attack Iraq.

Why would this be so?

I'd say it was to prevent a much larger war that spilled out throughout the entire Middle East and might have triggered a global war.

How do I come to this conclusion? By way of what we know and what we can reasonably surmise from the situation.

We KNOW (from CBS 60 Minutes Saddam's FBI interrogator, George Piro) that Saddam was making speeches which alluded to the existence of WMD's.

We KNOW that Israel had been attacked by Iraqi SCUD missiles in the 1991 Gulf War and the Israelis were concerned enough that these missiles contained bio or chemical agents that they issued gas masks to every citizen.

We KNOW that Israel wanted to retaliate but the US prevented not only their response after the first SCUD attacks but we stopped the IDF from participating in the coalition to preserve the Arab character of the war against Iraq.

We KNOW that whenever Israel is threatened they take action to negate that threat. (The Osirak Nuclear reactor attack 1981, and the recent targeted air attacks on Gaza following 1,000's of missiles launched on Israel since the end of the 6 month Cease Fire, for example.)

Based on what we know we can SURMISE there was pressure on the Israeli government to negate this perceived EXISTENTIAL WMD threat. But in attacking Saddam's perceived WMD's the probability existed that the Israelis would have triggered a larger war.

We KNOW that Israeli PM Sharon counseled President Bush before the invasion of Iraq.

What we do not know are the details of those discussions.

But based on what we know it is not all that difficult to make a plausible and reasonable argument that if the Bush Administration was "chafing" to go to war with Iraq it was with good justification.

A Middle Eastern War from Algeria to Afghanistan could easily have triggered a global holy war and cost millions of lives and resulted in nuclear exchanges with Pakistan, at least.

Instead we have two wars, limited in scope, one of them winnable and almost won, with far fewer casualties.

The facts of the matter will not be necessarily ever be revealed but I believe that knowing the truth should vindicate GWB and should be very interesting.

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OBL 11/24/02

Iriemon

I thought the argument was that Congress was equally to blame for Iraq because they had the same information that the administration did.

bhkad

That was never part of my rationale.

Mine is that, although there is information that only the President and Congress had, there is also information the President can gain from a phone call or a meeting that the Congress would not necessarily be privileged to.

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OBL 11/24/02

Iriemon

No, I never bought it either. But you see folks arguing all the times the Dems are just as much to blame for the war as Bush because they voted for the authorization resolution.

But as you point out, the Bush adminsitration had a lot of info they didn't. Clearly the buck stops with Bush for the Iraq fiasco.

bhkad

Just as long as you credit him for the successes I won't squawk.

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OBL 11/24/02