Iraq War Timeline: Lie by Lie

bhkad said:

THIS IS A METAPHOR AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS A THREAT.

How long would you allow your enemy to point a gun at your head?

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Billo_Really said:

That was Hans Blix final report on Iraq, 3 months after the war started.

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ADK_Forever said:

That dog just won’t hunt. Nobody is arguing that Hussein wasn’t a bad guy. Why haven’t we invaded allllllllllllllll the other countries run by ruthless murderers?

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It has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the admin knew the truth about Iraq’s WMDs.

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There is also plenty of proof that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted to invade Iraq since before they took office and they engineered a way to do it.

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ADK_Forever said:

That dog just won’t hunt. Nobody is arguing that Hussein wasn’t a bad guy. Why haven’t we invaded allllllllllllllll the other countries run by ruthless murderers?

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JMak said:

It was?

Huh. Because in January and February 2003, Blix reported to the Security Council that several thousand chemical bombs remained unaccounted, several thousands litres of anthrax remained unaccounted for, unaccounted weaponized anthrax etc., etc.

But all this was cleared up three months after the war started?

This is what you're arguing?

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ADK_Forever said:

And, if his gun were his finger? :mrgreen:

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"It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq," Piro says.

Before his wars with America, Saddam had fought a ruinous eight year war with Iran and it was Iran he still feared the most.

"He believed that he couldn't survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?" Pelley asks.

"Absolutely," Piro says.

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ADK_Forever said:

You're rewriting history... yet again. :doh

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The FEAR was that big old mushroom cloud... remember? Do you want me to post Condi's fear based statement yet again for your education?

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You can't dumb down their inaccurate excuse after the fact. :roll:

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bhkad said:

You and Obvious Child are of but one mind, it seems.

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I already pointed out to him that it is silly to compare the threat that was Saddam's Iraq with the threat of any other nation, then or now.

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Here's a clue, Saddam had started two wars with his neighbors, for personal gain, in 10 years.

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ADK_Forever said:

Justifying the invasion of Iraq is quite simply using the “ends justify the means” mentality (now that we all know their WMD threat was wrong!) and is frankly ignorant. The invasion of Iraq was couched under the umbrella of fear. Fear of that mushroom cloud, remember? It has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the admin knew the truth about Iraq’s WMDs. Yet, they hid that truth, engaged in conspiracies to cover up the truth and started conspiracies to discredit those exposing the truth. There is also plenty of proof that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted to invade Iraq since before they took office and they engineered a way to do it.

This is a corrupt and criminal administration. Read what some of its former members say about the truth behind the reasons we went to war at: An Oral History of the Bush White House: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

From that article:

There are many more quotes in that article from people who were in the middle of this crap, both in Bush’s administration and in foreign governments.

That he paid for his crimes I shed no tears.

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2003 Invasion of Iraq

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it cited non-compliance with the terms of cease-fire for the 1990-1991 Gulf War as its stated casus belli.[11]

Casus belli - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel - Bush Adviser
by Emad Mekay


WASHINGTON - IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 -- the 9/11 commission -- in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.

Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President George W. Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's security.

The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States.

Zelikow made his statements about ”the unstated threat” during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.

He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.

”Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.

Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel - Bush Adviser

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ADK_Forever said:

And you were wrong.

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ADK_Forever said:

So what? Apples and oranges.

THAT was not why BushCo "SAID" they invaded Iraq.

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bhkad said:

Shows how unenlightened you are. Everyone will WISH they could say they were neocons went the roll is called up yonder to see who was whom.

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MrVicchio said:

Yeah, that worked great in the 30's, avoiding war.

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bhkad said:

While, in other posts, you are willing to WHAT IF the 'wrongness' of the invasion and war, in effect looking at the glass as half empty, I think it is more informative to WHAT IF the 'rightness' of it and see the other side and recognize that there is a much more plausible scenario that your kind is too biased to even imagine.

This scenario makes more sense than any you have espoused and it ties up all the loose ends and accounts for all of the facts.

You just don't like it because it casts Bush as honorable and shows that the war was necessary and was the lesser of all evils.

Either we allowed Israel to protect itself but at the risk they'd trigger a regional or global Muslim Holy War or we persuaded the Israelis to leave their safety up to us and we did nothing and watched as a couple of mushroom clouds rose over Israel and with them the lives of millions, after which a world war would erupt.

Invasion was the best choice.

And keep in mind we gave Saddam every opportunity to leave with his family, mistresses and loot to live in exile.

He paid for his stupidity.

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Iriemon said:

Why is losing thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and good will the best choice? Let Israel fight its own battles if that is your concern.

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Iriemon said:

Wen roll is called up yonder? You mean you'll be rewarded for your crusade when you get to heaven?

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bhkad said:

If you are a pretty girl and have a no-nonsense boyfriend who is good with his fists you might understand the need to intercede between him and some silly jokers who don't realize his power or don't care if he starts a brawl in the restaurant where you are dining.

A regional M.E. war would have endangered the oil going to our trading partners and sent prices soaring. In addition, that conflict could have killed millions.

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Israel could take care of itself but Bush prevented that. Thank God!

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Iriemon said:

Why is losing thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and good will the best choice? Let Israel fight its own battles if that is your concern.

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Iriemon said:

Israel is not my girlfriend. Last I heard no one made it a state.



I personally wouldn't thank God for war and deaths if you're worried about the role call up yonder. But that's my veiw. Maybe you think they'll be some virgins or something for you promoting war and death.

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JMak said:

Why do you bother asking? It's not as if you'll accept any argument at all on this.

I think the reasoning that this war was fought to defend israel is bunk. Israel is an remains more than capable of handling Iraq.

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bhkad said:

Follow along. In the scenario I painted, YOU'D be the pretty girl and Israel the quick tempered boyfriend.

And if the number of deaths in the Iraq war equals 500,000 a Middle East War might produce 5,000,000 dead or more.

Anytime I can save lives I think that is better than not.

You advocate actions or inactions that could have cost many more lives.

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JMak said:

Why do you bother asking? It's not as if you'll accept any argument at all on this.

I think the reasoning that this war was fought to defend israel is bunk. Israel is an remains more than capable of handling Iraq.

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bhkad said:

Just how many wars for personal gain do you allow a dictator who kills and brutalizes his own people and wipes his arse with UN Cease Fire resolutions and embezzles millions in humanitarian aid monies before you wake up to the fact that he's a threat to his neighbors?

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I was hypothesizing that you were Israel's ally. But I see you refuse to don that cloak, even for the sake of the argument.

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Iriemon said:

Take it up with Bkhad. That's his claim.

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Saddam Hussein must go. This imperative may seem too simple for some experts and too daunting for the Clinton Administration. But if the United States is committed, as the President said in his State of the Union Message, to insuring that the Iraqi leader never again uses weapons of mass destruction, the only way to achieve that goal is to remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power. Any policy short of that will fail.

The good news is this: The Administration has abandoned efforts to win over the Iraqi leader with various carrots. It is clear that Mr. Hussein wants his weapons of mass destruction more than he wants oil revenue or relief for hungry Iraqi children. Now the Administration is reportedly planning military action -- a three- or four-day bombing campaign against Iraqi weapons sites and other strategic targets. But the bad news is that this too will fail. In fact, when the dust settles, we may be in worse shape than we are today.

Think about what the world will look like the day after the bombing ends. Mr. Hussein will still be in power -- if five weeks of heavy bombing in 1991 failed to knock him out, five days of bombing won't either. Can the air attacks insure that he will never be able to use weapons of mass destruction again? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Even our smart bombs cannot reliably hit and destroy every weapons and storage site in Iraq, for the simple reason that we do not know where all the sites are. After the bombing stops, Mr. Hussein will still be able to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. Pentagon officials admit this.

What will President Clinton do then? Administration officials talk of further punitive measures, like declaring a no-fly zone over all of Iraq, or even more bombing. But the fact is that the United States will have shot its bolt. Mr. Hussein will have proved the futility of American air power. The United Nations inspection regime will have collapsed; American diplomacy will be in disarray. Those who opposed military action all along -- the Russians, French and Chinese -- will demand the lifting of sanctions, and Mr. Hussein will be out of his box, free to terrorize our allies and threaten our interests.

Mr. Hussein has obviously thought through this scenario, and he likes his chances. That is why he provoked the present crisis, fully aware that it could lead to American bombing strikes. He has survived them before, and he is confident he can survive them again.

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ADK_Forever said:

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. :roll: 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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