NationStates Jolt Archive

this actually seems to be an issue. I'd like to know if anyone can resolve whether or not bush Lied, or if he was misled by the faulty intelligence and national sentiments.

If this issue is resolved, then it will also resolve whether or not Kerry would have done anything different in the same situaion.


Now i know that everyone who reads this is going to reply with his party's propaganda, and i won't discourage this entirely, but i'd like to ask you to please remember that there is no conclusive evidence that either John Kerry, nor George W. Bush is the anti-christ. So short of, "I'm voting against inherent absolute evil," reply how you like.

Did Bush know, or have reason to know, that Saddam did not have WMDs?

If he was mislead by intellingence then it was because it was about 15 years old

He was willfully ignorant. Some people were saying that Iraq had no WMD. Foremost among them was the guy, I forget his name, who was in charge of the WMD inspections after the first gulf war and during the Clinton administration. Most people beleived that Saddam had WMD based on his previous use of them. The way to find out for sure was to step up the inspection process. Bush was too impatient.

The point is whether or not he lied about the evidence, not whether or not he lied about his belief that a WMD programe existed in Iraq. Whether or not he lied about his belief cannot be proven very easily if at all. However whether or not he lied (either from his own mouth, or via the wider Bush regime personal and institutions such as Whitehouse press releases etc) is easily proven. The Bush regime told the USA and the rest of the world that they had indisputable proof. No reasonable person examining the proof after the war would discribe it as 'indisputable', various individual pieces of 'indisputable proof' have since been proven to be no better than 'flimsy' and or speculative. Take the 'moblie weapons' labs. When this 'evidence' was presented to the UN, Powell was asked point blank if the photos could be of anything other than mobile weapons labs, he said that the type and methodology of confirmation meant is was not possible that the labs were anything other than WMD mobile production labs. The 'labs' have since been found and positively identified.....as being farming equipment.

So when the Bush regime found that there were suggestions that perhaps the 'evidence' was mistaken, or did not present an 'air tight case', and the Bush regime responded by insisting the evidence was robust, even if they believed the speculations that they placed on the flimsy evidence, they knew that the evidence was not robust, was not 'indisputable', was not 'an airtight case' etc. They lied about the nature and strength of the evidence, so indeed they lied.

He was willfully ignorant. Some people were saying that Iraq had no WMD. Foremost among them was the guy, I forget his name, who was in charge of the WMD inspections after the first gulf war and during the Clinton administration. Most people beleived that Saddam had WMD based on his previous use of them. The way to find out for sure was to step up the inspection process. Bush was too impatient.This is about where I come down on the issue--willful ignorance. It fits in with Bush's previous behavior--come up with a conclusion and then make the evidence fit the conclusion instead of the right way (interpreting available evidence).

That said, whether or not Bush lied is immaterial. He's incompetent, which in my opinion is far more damning than his veracity or lack thereof.

Oh yeah a bunch of online geeks arguing their entrenched opinions will REALLY get to the bottom of this

You know because we must OBVIOSLY know the truth (but wait if we did and said it, it would just be taken as “partisan “ information anyways)

Lol way to start a collections of worthless babbling about what people “know”

“he must not have known … I mean look at his face … that is obvious proof” BAH

Bush and his chief administrative officers---Condelezza Rice and Secretary Powell---lied to the American public and the world about the status of WMD's in Iraq. They knew well in advance of the beginning of the present Iraq war that Hussein's regime was relegated, militarily, to little more than slingshots and stones. The Iraq War was predetermined, and is business-oriented.

For the definitive study of the question of what Bush (and Cheney, for that matter) knew and when they knew it, watch the movie, "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the War in Iraq." It is available for download and/or purchase on several websites (a Google check will reveal the film's popularity and authenticity.) This movie is not an "op-ed piece;" it is a fact-by-fact deconstruction of the fable told by the Bush Administration during the prelude to war. The film describes how the Iraq foreign desk (under the Office of the Secretary of Defense) was expanded at the request of Vice President Cheney to become what is now known and the Office of Special Plans; the "intelligence" organization serving the White House directly. If you understand the people staffing OSP, and compare the names to those listed in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC--check their website), the correlation between the efforts in Iraq and the furthering of American and Saudi business interests in the Middle East becomes quite clear.

I do not wish to sound conspiratorial or convince anyone reading this to believe such a conspiracy led to the war; view the film, review the PNAC website and review the public pronouncements by Bush, Cheney, Rice and Powell pre-war. Then decide.

I suspect internet geeks (whatever that means) are as capable of deductive reasoning as anyone else.

Fact: indisputable proof is that which proves something absolutely. If something is indisputably proven it cannot later be found to be false.
Fact: Bush admin claimed that the 'proof' with regards to Saddam's WMD programe was indisputable - ie it was not possible that Saddam did not have an active WMD programe.
Fact: Saddam did not have a WMD programe so there could not have been indisputable evidence that he did have an active WMD.

Apply deductive reasoning to facts. There is only one conclusion - the Bush administration lied.

I suspect internet geeks (whatever that means) are as capable of deductive reasoning as anyone else.

Fact: indisputable proof is that which proves something absolutely. If something is indisputably proven it cannot later be found to be false.
Fact: Bush admin claimed that the 'proof' with regards to Saddam's WMD programe was indisputable - ie it was not possible that Saddam did not have an active WMD programe.
Fact: Saddam did not have a WMD programe so there could not have been indisputable evidence that he did have an active WMD.

Apply deductive reasoning to facts. There is only one conclusion - the Bush administration lied.


They are capable of reasoning off of information that they really don’t know

I mean just add
“Fact they thought they had indisputable proof in there but was really fake information” and it throws the reasoning trail you lead all to hell


It could be indisputable information to them if they have no other information to dispute it with

But again we don’t have complete information … it is still all OPINION

Whatever the case is, Saddam Hussien doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to WMDs and UN inspectors

However, Upward Thrust, we can make some conculsions based on the previous conduct of the Bush administration. They have shown a predilection from the start of their administration to ignore evidence that didn't fit in with their pre-conceived notions or that was inconvenient for people or groups that gave them tons of money. Their stance on global warming, on pretty much anything scientific for that matter, provides ample precedent, especially when combined with the reporting by people like Seymour Hersh and Walter Pincus that describes the stovepiping of information that was favorable and the ignoring of information that questioned their assumptions.

There's good reason to believe they were willfully ignorant of the facts on the ground, which is more a sign of incompetence than of venality, but which is still reason enough to toss them on their asses in November.

However, Upward Thrust, we can make some conculsions based on the previous conduct of the Bush administration. They have shown a predilection from the start of their administration to ignore evidence that didn't fit in with their pre-conceived notions or that was inconvenient for people or groups that gave them tons of money. Their stance on global warming, on pretty much anything scientific for that matter, provides ample precedent, especially when combined with the reporting by people like Seymour Hersh and Walter Pincus that describes the stovepiping of information that was favorable and the ignoring of information that questioned their assumptions.

There's good reason to believe they were willfully ignorant of the facts on the ground, which is more a sign of incompetence than of venality, but which is still reason enough to toss them on their asses in November.

True … don’t get me wrong I am not taking a side … just the fact that people seem to “know facts” so much … I was more arguing against the fact that people are actually trying to argue out this stuff as fact.

Just come out and say it … this is my opinion … and not get huffy when others question the OPINION
(probably not making much sense at this time in the morning and after a wedding … but :) )

Will you all just stop talking about these crackpot conspiracy theories, please? :mad: Focus on the issues, not on defeating Bush!

I think this was a case of Bush hearing what he wanted to hear. The intelligence was shakey (I think we can all admit that) but Bush, as most teenagers (myself included) and parents do well, simply tuned out the 'we think' part and hear 'there are WMDs'.

That seems pretty plausable.

Conservative Country, please don't interrupt a good debate. This is getting good.

I personally think that Dubya did lie to the american public about there being WMDs in Iraq. Iran is a different story, but as a previous poster said, militarily Iraq is down to sticks and stones. And a few grenades but that's not the point. My bet is that if there WERE any WMDs in Iraq, they'd be out in the desert with no roads leading to them.

EDIT: for a bit of fun, go to google, type in WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION and hit "I'm feeling lucky". :D

Will you all just stop talking about these crackpot conspiracy theories, please? :mad: Focus on the issues, not on defeating Bush!
In the end, it's the issues that will wind up bringing about Bush's defeat.

Bush believed that Saddam had WMDs because he used that capability on the Kurds, the Marsh Arabs and the Iranians. All in all, everybody else believed he had WMDs too. The French, the rest of NATO, his neighbors, defectors from his weapons programs and military all believed this. What seems likely is that most of Saddam's WMDs probably wound up in Syria. Though some were recovered in Jordan when terrorists tried to use them to blow up and gas about a square mile of downtown Amman in order to destroy the US embassy, the royal family and generally decapitate the government of Jordan. Others have been recovered in small amounts in Iraq. Given the way CIA has been ridden into the ground since the 1970s in general and under Tenet in particular, I'm not surprised that CIA got this wrong -- consider how much else they've gotten wrong lately. That was Tenet's problem, the position of CIA chief calls for a brilliant puzzle solving mind, not a government bureaucrat such as Clinton appointed. Bush should have gotten rid of Tenet on day 1, or at least after 9/11, and Tenet's replacement the former DCI is another of the same mold. The whole top layer of that bureaucracy needs to be cleaned out/reformed. Contrast CIA top members with NSA for example. What Saddam was trying to achieve was to let the clock run out on sanctions which were rapidly losing steam and being violated left and right while maintaining a just in time capability via dual use hardware to basically be able to reconstitute WMD programs and production overnight once the UN and US gave up and went home. As the things being found in Iraq indicate, he almost pulled it off. In any case, WMD came in around number three or four for me as a reason to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam. One, violation of ceasefire agreement at end of Desert Storm and repeated attacks on US forces in violation of same. Two, humanitarian -- just ask the people of Iraq for details. Three... All in all it's a long list. And aside from reason number one, it applies to the rest of the Axis of Evil in every particular as well the rest of the usual suspects such as Syria, Lebannon.

And as for trusting the UN to do anything, one has only to look at how the UN indifference to the Rwandan genocide is being repeated in the Darfur region of Sudan today.

Oh, and upward thrust the science on global warming has pretty well been debunked, most notably and recently in three nifty papers in the scientific literature. It's now one with that nuclear winter thing.

As a quick heads up on the state of yesterday's art in bioweaponry, try this:
http://www.hspig.org/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=442

"Compared to bioweapons, nukes are just a great big bubble gum pop." -- Howard Anderson

Emperor Pro-Tem "Big D"
--
"... we have begun. Neither wind nor tide is always with us. Our course on a dark and stormy sea cannot always be clear. But we have set sail -- and the horizon, however cloudy, is also full of hope." -- John F. Kennedy, Introduction to "To Turn the Tide" (Nov. 8, 1961)

"Peace and freedom do not come cheap, and we are destined -- all of us here today -- to live out most if not all our lives in uncertainty and challenge and peril." -- John F. Kennedy Address at the University of North Carolina (Oct. 12, 1961)

"All of this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin." -- John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address (Jan. 20, 1961)

The point is not whether Saddam once had chemical or biological weapons - nor even whether anyone reasonably felt he had enough of them to be a threat, after years of intrusive (and effective) UN inspections. UN inspections destroyed Saddam's NBC programs; the first gulf war did not.

The real point is that what the CIA thought about Iraq had "WMD" was irrelevant to whether or not the US was going to war. The national intelligence estimate was created in four weeks at the request of Congress, not the Bush administration. From Richard Clarke to official "f*ck Saddam - we're taking him out" Bush spin, it was clear months ahead of time that Bush's mind was made up. Call it "faith-based foreign policy".

Pre-9/11, both Colin Powell and Condi Rice said that Saddam was contained and could not project a threat to his neighbors, much less anyone else. What changed was the opportunity to put poorly thought out neoconservative goals into place. Remember how long the occupation was originally going to last? How much it would cost ? How long before the US would 'draw down' to 40,000 troops?

Did our allies think that Saddam still had active WMD? In some cases, yes. Why did they think that? Because we assured them that we had incontrovertible evidence, not because they came to any independent conclusion. Once, US allies would take the word of the United States (famously, De Gaulle in the Cuban Missile Crisis). No more.

Will you all just stop talking about these crackpot conspiracy theories, please? Focus on the issues, not on defeating Bush!

In the end, it's the issues that will wind up bringing about Bush's defeat.

Or Kerry. To make your four months in Vietnam the centerpiece of your campaign without thinking it through in detail and working out ahead of time how your opponent(s) would attack you on that issue doesn't exactly show a stellar mind at work. And his staff could use somebody competent to vet these things too. I mean, between Google, Lexis/Nexis, and a copy of Kerry's military records his staff should have not dropped the ball this way or at least advised him that he was somewhat factually challenged on the issue and might want to rethink this.

Contrast the Swift Boat Vets for Truth bunch and their website and their ad. All the facts they've got laid out on their website. With the ad came a nice cover letter pointing out the facts in support thereof so that when Kerry's first response to the ad (sic the lawyers on the TV stations airing the ads), they had already ambushed that tactic. And the way it was handled by Kerry and his staff showed yet another failure of nerve and ability. When caught in a lie or at least a serious misremembering, don't lawyer up and get defensive. It looks a hell of lot worse that just admitting the truth of the matter and keeps the issue alive that much longer (and its not like this is an issue that works to Kerry's advantage). The fact that nearly everyone in the Swift Boats command that Kerry served in disliked/hated him that much says either horrendous things about him as a person or that they (the vets) feel justified in trotting this all out one more time because of the slanders John Kerry leveled against them back when as a member of VVAW before Congress.

"Wash a pig as much as you like, it goes right back to the mud." -- old Russian proverb

"But the training was so rough, the preparation was so tough.
My first days as a superhero weren't good.
I couldn't be two-fisted (was a bit too much limp-wristed)
And I minced instead of striding as I should."

"Well, the man he gotta whisper
When he tell you 'bout the news
ICBM's are comin' in;
You know those bombs don't know the blues.
...
So baby hold me in the morning,
You know I ain't no hero,
And there ain't nowhere to run to
'Cause everywhere's ground zero...
ground zero...
ground zero...
ground zero..."
-- Armageddon Blues Band (Daniel Keyes Moran)

Though some were recovered in Jordan when terrorists tried to use them to blow up and gas about a square mile of downtown Amman in order to destroy the US embassy, the royal family and generally decapitate the government of Jordan.

Link? I'm not familiar with this 'discovery' of chemical weapons. Hopefully there's more evidence for this than the purported assassination plot versus Bush I. (Yes, a few chemical weapons have been found in Iraq, more than a decade past their sell-by date. This doesn't begin to approach the make up for the cost of invasion over inspections.)

Why would Syria need to import chemical weapons? They have their own program. This is clear BS, brought to us by the never-ending war program. Where will they go next after there's no sign of them in Syria? (Oh, and if Saddam's WMDs ended up in Syria, where they could be given to terrorists - isn't that a clear statement that the war in Iraq was a mistake?)

The 'violation of cease-fire' issue was thoroughly debunked in the thread about the illegality of the Iraq War.

Oh, and upward thrust the science on global warming has pretty well been debunked, most notably and recently in three nifty papers in the scientific literature. It's now one with that nuclear winter thing.

Um, no. Climate change (global warming is, alas, kind of a stupid name) is pretty widely accepted by everyone except the fossil fuel industry, and a few scientists who play with other people's studies. Dismissal of climate change is at the same point now that "nicotine wasn't addictive" a few decades ago.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sarsum1.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/climatefaq.jsp;jsessionid=EAFNANLJCENM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1225064.stm
http://www.ec.gc.ca/science/sandejan01/article4_e.html

Contrast the Swift Boat Vets for Truth bunch and their website and their ad. All the facts they've got laid out on their website.

Except for the fact that the doctor who criticized his wound never saw it; his statements are based on his recollections of conversations with people whose names he can't remember.

Or the fact that many of the Swifties supported Kerry during his senate campaigns, and said things then that directly contradict what they said now.

Or the fact that the PI who went looking for dirt misquoted several of the people he interviewed.

Or the fact that Kerry's biography was unflattering to the founder of Swift Boat vets.

Or the fact that their own medal paperwork (i.e., Thurlow) backs up Kerry. And one of the swifties was the eyewitness for Kerry's silver star, and said some very glowing things about Kerry at the time.

All the facts - except the facts.

Kerry would have been attacked on Vietnam regardless of what he did - when do you think that this book got started? Let's be real, here. This is just what Bush did to McCain, minus the accusations of an illegitimate black child. Still, let's be fair to Bush, there's still some time left before the election...

Or Kerry. To make your four months in Vietnam the centerpiece of your campaign without thinking it through in detail and working out ahead of time how your opponent(s) would attack you on that issue doesn't exactly show a stellar mind at work. And his staff could use somebody competent to vet these things too. I mean, between Google, Lexis/Nexis, and a copy of Kerry's military records his staff should have not dropped the ball this way or at least advised him that he was somewhat factually challenged on the issue and might want to rethink this.

Contrast the Swift Boat Vets for Truth bunch and their website and their ad. All the facts they've got laid out on their website. With the ad came a nice cover letter pointing out the facts in support thereof so that when Kerry's first response to the ad (sic the lawyers on the TV stations airing the ads), they had already ambushed that tactic. And the way it was handled by Kerry and his staff showed yet another failure of nerve and ability. When caught in a lie or at least a serious misremembering, don't lawyer up and get defensive. It looks a hell of lot worse that just admitting the truth of the matter and keeps the issue alive that much longer (and its not like this is an issue that works to Kerry's advantage). The fact that nearly everyone in the Swift Boats command that Kerry served in disliked/hated him that much says either horrendous things about him as a person or that they (the vets) feel justified in trotting this all out one more time because of the slanders John Kerry leveled against them back when as a member of VVAW before Congress.Alas, FFZ, you've got it backwards. Kerry's the one who's gotten the story right on the situation regarding his medals and his service in Veitnam, while the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush have been utterly and completely discredited. They're liars--caught by their own words from 35 years ago--and they're partisans, backed by long time Republican supporters of Bush and working hand in hand with Rove in violation of Federal law. One person who was connected directly with the Swift Vets has already resigned from his position on the RNC steering committee. That's coordination between a party and a 527 group, and that's illegal.

As far as the "slanders" are concerned, maybe you ought to actually read Kerry's testimony from 1971, since I'm willing to bet you aren't old enough to have actually heard it. In it, he reports what he heard from people who had served in the war--he does not condemn the soldiers as a whole. He is a conduit for information that came as a result of an investigation he and others led into the atrocities committed by US soldiers during the Vietnam conflict--and there certainly were atrocities committed by US soldiers.

Now, if the Swift Vets want to criticize Kerry for his anti-war activities, fine--as long as they do it honestly, I've got no grief with them. But if they're going to mischaracterize statements, or if they're going to accuse Kerry of inflating his record and not earning his medals, then we're going to have some trouble. And trouble they've got.

[QUOTE=Shinra Megacorporation]If this issue is resolved, then it will also resolve whether or not Kerry would have done anything different in the same situaion.QUOTE]
Nah. Kerry woulda changed positions in about 30 seconds, just like he always does.

Given that the War on Terror (awful name that) after 9/11 has been about taking the fight to the terrorist organizations where they live and the governments that support them, Iraq is the logical number two to take down after Afghanistan.

By taking out Iraq, you end a running sore in the Middle East, you isolate two state-sponsoring terrorists as now neither Iran nor Syria/Lebannon have any friendly nations on their borders.

WMDs were only important as an argument to justify going to the UN for England and Tony Blair. That was the only reason -- well that and to demonstrate conclusively to the American people the pusillanimity of the UN which they seem determined to follow through on in the current instant in Darfur.

Further a peaceful, democratic Iraq is a dagger pointed straight at the hearts of every Arab dictator in the region, while reinforcing the aspirations of the neighboring Iranian people. Certainly, if Iran does not reform soon, those mad theocrats are going to kill, or get killed, a lot of people.

Rafsanjani's recent reiteration that nuclear weapons will be used on Israel at the earliest moment is like pinning a big "NUKE ME!!!" sign on themselves.

The Israeli arsenal is estimated at between 65-200 warheads. At the high end, that would account for every significant city in the Middle East as well as the Aswan High Dam in Egypt (which catastrophic failure would immediately through flooding kill 90%+ of the Egyptian populace for the expenditure of one warhead). Then again they might decide to target US forces in Iraq or a US city, as we are the Great Satan.

When faced with nuclear state sponsored terrorism by intransigent zealots there is no reason not to respond massively so as to destroy the economy and society that is building and distributing those warheads. The US has literally tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and more metric tons of weapons grade enriched material left over from the Cold War that can be used to make more nuclear warheads, so to play this game for real, is to indulge in suicide bombing at the nation state level. IE we get hurt but the bomber gets dead.

Given the porosity of US borders, the only sane response to nuclear terrorism directed against US cities is nuclear genocide. And bioweapons are just so much worse.

He was willfully ignorant. Some people were saying that Iraq had no WMD. Foremost among them was the guy, I forget his name, who was in charge of the WMD inspections after the first gulf war and during the Clinton administration. Most people beleived that Saddam had WMD based on his previous use of them. The way to find out for sure was to step up the inspection process. Bush was too impatient.

The inspector's name you are looking for I believe is Hans Blix, and I agree completely with what you said - he knew what one side was saying, but when evidence came up which contradicted it, he ignored it instead of giing it consideration. And using 15-year old intelligence without intense sccrutiny and care is a dangerous proposition to begin with, so he should have known better. Keyword: should. Not did.

Furthermore, instead of following due process, he simply went on his own way, disrespecting the autority of the world (as if they matter, right? :rolleyes: )

who cares what Bush knew or didnt know-he wanted a war with iraq since before he was appointed as president

EDIT: for a bit of fun, go to google, type in WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION and hit "I'm feeling lucky". :D

Hehe - noice....

saddam was no " imminent theat" and IF he was he could only bomb 50 miles out of his own country and if thats so then the sourrounding countries can invade him to stop this.


anyway i think america should be inspected for once as they have most of the nukes and still want to make them and other WMDs and and guantanamo bay and all other world disasters they have created or tried to
"cold war, nuclear war, the end of the world, no fair trade, cuban missile crisis ( i see for the cubans it was a resonable thing to do, as you do exactly the same but with the whole world), mass murders in various countries, intervening o the Vietnam war ( not your war), poluting of the oceans, not helping on ocasions, making bad movies and creating the star trek thing.

April 26, 2004 terrorist attack in Amman, Jordan thwarted.
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story_txt.asp?date=042704&ID=s1513617
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/26/jordan.terror/
Leader claimed to be working for Zarqawi in Iraq of Al-Quida fame. If attack (only days from coming off at time of thwaring) had gone through, then as many as 80,000 could have died.
In any case the fact that only old or obsolete stockpiles have been found does not address the dual-use nature of much of Iraq industry. Clorine production capabilities sufficient to clorinate the whole Iraqi water supply ... six times over. Fertilizer and industrial plants with large phosgene manufacturing capabilities. Phosphorus compounds are the precursors used in the manufacture of numerous nerve agents. This sort of just in time capability to produce WMDs at a moments notice while officially having zero on hand is at least a violation of the spirit of those agreements and UN resolutions if not their letter. The development of long range ballistic missiles contrary to UN sanctions as a proven fact. It just goes on and on. Hans Blix merely proved that if you give someone 24 hours notice before you show up they can move the body quite easily when given the resources of a nation state. The mobile biological laboratories built into trailers so as to be able to haul them hither and yon to avoid inspectors is just one example. Two of these were found buried in the sand, suitably sanitized first though.

Global warming:
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/news/08025453H28_news.shtml is the news story.
http://www.esf.edu/newspubs/news/2004/08.02.globalwarming.pdf is the paper.
Basically it argues that the climate models are wrong in fashion similar to Dr. Vajk's arguments (collected in "Doomsday Has Been Cancelled" (1974)) against the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" models.

http://www.globalwarming.org/
http://globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=742
which points out that satellite observations of the planet as a whole show that temperatures since December 1978 have dropped 0.213Celcius. Other sources point out that in 1979 global ocean temperatures rose a tenth of a degree Celsius but have remained unchanged since then.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html
basically the links between CO2 levels (as stimulated by fossil fuel based industry) and rises in global temperature
have not been linked. That is not to say that temperatures may not be rising. But urban temperatures (which most weather stations measure) have to deal with the 'heat island' effect of most cities and it seems these allowances have not been properly made. The climate models aren't sufficiently accurate to postdict the past so how can they be trusted to model the future accurately? Then there is the solar constant (Finagle's Law: Constants aren't; Variables don't.) which seems to vary at least a little. It may be significant to note that when solar activity was at its historical low point (The Maunder Minimum) Europe was in the grip of the Little Ice Age while today with solar activity at near historic highs temperatures weather is currently better than normal though it seems that the current interglacial period is slated to end sometime within the next 10,000 years.

Bush Jr. wanted to attack Iraq from the earliest days of his Presidency. So what did Bush know before he ordered the invasion?

1. According to Scott Ritter (previous UN inspector before Blix) Iraq was severly lacking in WMD and ability to produce same.

2. Iraq's air force was non existent.

3. Iraq's anti-aircraft positions had been repeatedly bombed from 1998 onwards, rendering them basically useless.

4. Iraq's army had been decimated due to the long Iran/Iraq War plus the Gulf War.

5. Iraq was economically starved through UN sanctions.

6. US intelligence regarding Iraq's possible WMD was sketchy at best.

7. US intelligence regarding an Iraqi/Al-Queda connection was sketchy at best.

8. The UN inspections in Iraq started up again in November 2002, and over 300 inspectors were not finding any WMD.

9. Iraq has the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world.

10. Iraq was ripe for invasion and that US casualties would be very low.

11. Many of his friends could “profit” from an invasion of Iraq!

12. Many of his friends could “profit” from an invasion of Iraq!!

13. Many of his friends could “profit” from an invasion of Iraq!!!

14. Many of his friends could “profit” from an invasion of Iraq!!!!

15. If he waited for the UN inspectors to complete their inventory of Iraqi WMD, many of his friends would NOT “profit” from an invasion of Iraq………………..

I doubt George W. Bush can spell WMD.
That said, it was a classic example of selective bias regarding the use of information they had available. Any that didn't back their claims of WMDs were considered faulty and the ones that supported them were immediately accepted with no investigation of the sources.

Who knows, who cares, the damage's been done.

this actually seems to be an issue. I'd like to know if anyone can resolve whether or not bush Lied, or if he was misled by the faulty intelligence and national sentiments.

If this issue is resolved, then it will also resolve whether or not Kerry would have done anything different in the same situaion.


Now i know that everyone who reads this is going to reply with his party's propaganda, and i won't discourage this entirely, but i'd like to ask you to please remember that there is no conclusive evidence that either John Kerry, nor George W. Bush is the anti-christ. So short of, "I'm voting against inherent absolute evil," reply how you like.

Did Bush know, or have reason to know, that Saddam did not have WMDs?

Well, you can always read the historical press releases and news stories collated here to decide:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0804-11.htm

Now, before somebody points to Common Dream's obvious bias, look to the sources of the links for who was saying what. They are generally links to original news stories from mainstream sources such as CNN, ABC, etc

What this provides is how the official story about IRaq changed over time from a non-threat, to a huge threat with stockpiles of known WMD, to "gosh - he might have reconstituted a program...in the future"

Interesting how Powell was stating earlier in 2001 that Saddam did not have WMD. How could he possibly have forgotten that in a few short months? How could he never have mentioned that to GW during meetings?

We will always try to consult with our friends in the region so that they are not surprised and do everything we can to explain the purpose of our responses. We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue.


How did he go from not having WMD capability and not even having the conventional army left to even threaten a neeighbour to being a threat to stability in the region, and a direct threat to the US?

Sourced right from the State Department: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2001/933.htm

And as for trusting the UN to do anything, one has only to look at how the UN indifference to the Rwandan genocide is being repeated in the Darfur region of Sudan today.



I'm not going to argue Rwanda of the Sudan - besides to point out that the UN by itself doesn't DO anything. It is a forum for the members to decide to DO something, and Kofi Anan has been pressing for something to be done in the Sudan for months. The member states - including the US who believe that military intervention is not neccessary - have been ignoring the issue.

That being said, given that it seems that there were no WMD, then I would argue that the UN did not HAVE to do anything regarding Iraq. Not anymore. The sanctions, inspections, and dissarmament process HAD worked.

So, the UN did do something. It put in place a process that successfully disarmed Iraq. Saddam repeatedly stated that he had fully disarmed. GW refused to believe him and has done something that seems to have been totally unneccessary. And at such a cost.


The only argument GW still uses is that Saddam "still had the capability and expertise, that he could have reconstituted a program at a later date".

Well, that being said - there is no point disarming anyone. Of COURSE they retain the expertise. You can't just forget something you've learned. What was Saddam supposed to have done? Rounded up every scientist and employee who had worked on the programs in the 80's and executed them all? Is GW going to do that to ensure that the next Iraqi government still doesn't have "the expertise"? I think not.

So that is a BS argument on his part. It only states an obvious fact that cannot be mitigated without resorting to cold-blooded murder that the US wouldn't do either. Without some indication of intent - it is a complete non-starter of an argument in my books. And GW saying that he had the intent is just not enough proof to go on. Not with his track record.

Looking at the responses in this thread it's clear most of the comments are from Americans, and reflect their biases. To the outside world, the difference between Bush and Kerry is not great. One's just a bit more intelligent, and won't be drag America's name into the mud quite as much as the other, but it's a very similar agenda.

Look at the World press freedom index (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=8247). The US is down in 32nd position, just above Albania and Poland. Not too bad, but way below truly free countries, such as the Netherlands and Norway, and it put's Bush's claims of 'freedom' into perspective. And look at how the US treats it's occupied territories. This is just one measurement, but there are other objective measurements that put America in the 2nd league as far as human development and freedoms go. American democracy is sadly a joke to much of the free world, and even depots such as Robert Mugabe make themselves look good when comparing themselves to America. Ownership of the media, and thus the news you hear, is concentrated in a number of rich corporations. The notorious Fox Media, completely ignoring US crimes, is a case in point. For many Americans, there's not much choice. Hence they still believe things like WMD were found, that global warming is a myth, Sept 11 to them means the attack in the US, not the day they US-funded coup ended democracy in Chile in 1973. Look at US support for the notorious Jonas Savimbi, Mobuto etc. You are what you know, and powerful know the media is their best weapon. Internet geeks in America are actually in a better position to know what's happening than most of their offline counterparts. Use it well, and work to improve America. Unfortunately it matters to the rest of the world because the US is stuffing it up for the rest of us. Is it really only Bush vs Kerry? God help us.

I don't think it really mattered to Bush whether Iraq had WMD or not. He planned to invade Iraq from the day he took office, there has been much written about it now. As to the WMD, I think he made it very clear to the CIA to "make the case" I believe the CIA knew what that meant.. as I'm sure you do.