For there beiong no WMD

[Hobbes]

Remember these?

Mobile biological weapons production systems Iraq was alleged to have.
Source was an Iraqi defector named "curveball"
Citing "curveball" SoS Powell presented this evidence to the UN as evidence of the Iraqi WMD production Programs.

Let us see how that worked out:

In 2003, inspectors led by David Kay conducted additional investigation of Curveball's credibility. They found among other things that he placed last in his university class when he had claimed to place first, and that he had been jailed for embezzlement before fleeing to Germany. The former point is relevant because Curveball claimed to have been hired out of university to head Iraq's bioweapons program. That he had placed last in his class would cast considerable doubt on this claim.

In response to public criticism, U.S. president Bush initiated an investigative commission who released their report on March 31, 2005. Bush's investigative commission came to many conclusions including:

Curveball's German intelligence handlers saw him as "crazy … out of control", his friends called him a "congenital liar", and a US physician working for the Defense Department who travelled to Germany to take blood samples seeking to discover if Anthrax spores were present was stunned to find the defector had shown up for medical tests with a "blistering hangover",[18] and he "might be an alcoholic".[19]
While there were many reports that Curveball was actually a relative (younger brother) of one of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) top aides,[20][21] the investigative commission stated that it was "unable to uncover any evidence that the INC or any other organization was directing Curveball."[22]
The Bush administration ignored evidence from the UN weapons inspectors that Curveball's claims were false. Curveball had identified a particular Iraqi facility as a docking station for mobile labs. Satellite photography had showed a wall made such access impossible, but it was theorised that this wall was temporary. "When United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) inspectors visited the site on February 9, 2003, they found that the wall was a permanent structure and could find nothing to corroborate Curveball's statements."[23] Instead, the inspectors found the warehouse to be used for seed processing.[24]

Blame

The Bush administration laid blame on the CIA, criticizing its officials for "failing to investigate" doubts about Curveball, which emerged after an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. In May 2004, over a year after the invasion of Iraq, the CIA concluded formally that Curveball's information was fabricated. Furthermore, on June 26, 2006, The Washington Post reported that "the CIA acknowledged that Curveball was a con artist who drove a taxi in Iraq and spun his engineering knowledge into a fantastic but plausible tale about secret bioweapons factories on wheels."[15]

On April 8, 2005, CIA Director Porter Goss ordered an internal review of the CIA in order to determine why doubts about Curveball's reliability were not forwarded to policy makers. Former CIA Director George Tenet and his former deputy, John E. McLaughlin, announced that they were not aware of doubts about Curveball's veracity before the war. However, Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA's European division, told the Los Angeles Times that "everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening."

In February 2011, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi admitted for the first time that he lied about his story regarding Iraq's secret biological weapons program.[8] He also admitted to being shocked that his false story was used as a justification for the Iraq War but proud that the fabrications helped topple Saddam Hussein.

According to the Danish "The man who lied the World into War" film (2010/2011 update, basing on sources) after he was found by the document makers and they put questions to the chief security and spy services of his new home country, he lost his "work" (in a company found and described by the document makers as a cover with his position of "marketing specialist") and "salary with flat". Then, when he had to get back to the social one-room flat with social security help-salary, he phoned the documentary staff proposing an interview for the €40000 (before the UK newspaper article). He also showed papers which, according to him, clearly proved that a contract between him and this "cover company" had been signed for the 15 years, starting in the 1999/2000, with a relatively high monthly salary of €3000

 

[Hobbes]

Remember this guy?

He was on all the major TV networks nearly daily describing Saddam's nuclear weapons program.

In 2002, Scott Ritter, a long-time colleague of Albright heavily criticized the Bush administration and Media outlets for using the testimony of Hamza as a rationale for invading Iraq;

We seized the entire records of the Iraqi nuclear program, especially the administrative records. We got a name of everybody, where they worked, what they did, and the top of the list, Saddam's 'Bombmaker' was a man named Jafar Dhia Jafar, not Khidir Hamza, and if you go down the list of the senior administrative personnel you will not find Hamza's name in there. In fact, we didn't find his name at all. Because in 1990, he didn't work for the Iraqi Nuclear Program. He had no knowledge of it because he worked as a kickback specialist for Hussein Kamel in the Presidential Palace.

He goes into northern Iraq and meets up with Ahmad Chalabi. He walks in and says, "I'm Saddam's 'Bombmaker'". So they call the CIA and they say, "we know who you are, you're not Saddam's 'Bombmaker', go sell your story to someone else." And he was released, he was rejected by all intelligence services at the time, he's a fraud.

And here we are, someone who the CIA knows is a fraud, the US Government knows is a fraud, is allowed to sit in front of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and give testimony as a expert witness. I got a problem with that, I got a problem with the American media, and I've told them over and over and over again that this man is a documentable fraud, a fake, and yet they allow him to go on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and testify as if he actually knows what he is talking about.

 

[Hobbes]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...eflect-what-administration-officials-claimed/

 

[jfssms]

Fast forward 13 years, Obama is building his case to send ground troops into Iraq.

 

[Hobbes]

Fast forward 13 years, Obama is building his case to send ground troops into Iraq.

AUMF will go nowhere in Congress.
Democrats fear he goes too far and Republicans are convinced he doesn't go far enough.

I will be greatly surprised if they even hold a vote on it.

 

[jfssms]

AUMF will go nowhere in Congress.
Democrats fear he goes too far and Republicans are convinced he doesn't go far enough.

I will be greatly surprised if they even hold a vote on it.

He can come and go to Iraq and Afghanistan now. Thanks Bush!

 

[RidgeHunter]

My niece loaned me a copy of this book about a big red dog. The sheer size of this dog is incredible. Why the MSM hasn't picked up on it I don't know, but as for me and the boys at the coffee shop, we know the truth.

 

[RidgeHunter]

Remember when Rumsfeld shook Sadamm's hand? Remember what Howard Teicher said? Remember your B-Movie actor and cigarette salesmen stumbling all over himself to stroke Hussein off? There's your conspiracies and your blinders.

Who did Obama bow to again? Lawl. You fruitcakes.

 

[jfssms]

Fruitcakes seem to be passed down without regard to political affiliation.

 

[HMCS(FMF)Ret.]

The Middle East. Every time I think about that region it makes me want to puke. We needed to kick someone's ass for 9/11. Anyone's ass would do, cause we were pissed. Nothing wrong with that. WMD's...LOL. Why don't we just say, that country looked at me funny....so I had to stomp a mud-hole in their ass. But oh-no!!!!! Then, we decide we are the next coming of Christ...we have to stay and "save" them. Dumb.