They couldn't get WMDs straight - what makes you so sure the exterminated were "terrorists?

Everything they did is suspect - all under layers upon layers of secrecy. If it was correct, legal and moral - WHY DID THEY HIDE IT?

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

http://www.discovery.org/blogs/discoveryblog/2008/01/truth_about_wmd_in_iraq_uncove_1.php

CBS' Sixty Minutes devoted most of its Sunday program to one revealing story, an account of the remarkably productive seven month long interrogation of Saddam Hussein by FBI agent George Piro, an Arabic speaking American of Lebanese descent. According to the way the story was handled on the air and in the CBS online account of it, as well as the way the international press picked it up, the big news was that Saddam got rid of his WMD in the 1990s, but refused to prove it--even when threatened by U.S. attack. The reasons, he said, were that he feared revealing Iraq's weakness to its real enemy, Iran, and that he needed the perception of WMD to maintain his prestige at home. He also believed that the worst that President George W. Bush would do to him was to drop some bombs, the way President Clinton had done in 1998.

But that story, interesting as it might be, is not altogether new. Moreover, it does not compare to the golden news nugget lodged deep within the Sixty Minutes segment; namely, that Saddam expressly told Piro that he had planned to restart the WMD program in all phases--"chemical, biological and nuclear"--within a year after the lifting of U.N. sanctions. The 9/11 attacks and the reactions to them set back his plan, but didn't eliminate it.

This stated intention of Saddam constitutes fresh justification for the American-led invasion in 2003. Had the United States accepted the view that Iraq lacked WMD and no longer posed a threat, it would have been only a matter of time before new WMD efforts by Iraq were undertaken. And, once the West had stood down in 2003, the second round of WMD development would have been far harder to stop. By now--in 2008--Saddam could well have had the WMD he wanted all along. Iran, meanwhile, would have been given urgent incentive to move forward more quickly on its own WMD program. The Bush Administration knew all this, but now we have a report of Saddam himself confirming it.

There is little reason in this case to doubt either the veracity of Piro or the candor of Saddam. Certainly in its Sixty Minutes program, CBS and reporter Scott Pelley, demonstrate complete faith in Piro and the FBI reports. The FBI, says the CBS story, rates the Piro interrogation as one of the top achievements of the Bureau's past 100 years of existence. If, then, the Piro interrogation can be trusted, Saddam's plain statement that he had planned to construct WMD again also must be credited. In fact, it is credited in the Sixty Minutes program. However, it also is completely played down there, both in the program itself and in the CBS news account derived from it. The press stories that covered the program followed CBS' lead and lede. Most press stories that I found online omitted altogether Saddam's statements that he had always planned to restart his WMD program.

How could CBS News step on its own big story, and produce a minor story instead? Perhaps the answer is that for over five years now CBS and most Western media have followed the liberal party line has discounted President Bush's concerns about WMD, judging them either a deceit or a delusion. The American president was either malign ("Bush Lied, People DIed") or a dunce. As a third option, charitable interpreters on the left (and some on the right) have described Bush as sadly misinformed by his intelligence services and led to make the tragic mistake of invading Iraq. It took a long time, with day after day of news twists, but variations on these views finally suffused public opinion and persuaded a majority of Americans against the wisdom of the Iraq War. Who can doubt that those views are largely responsible for Bush's relatively low public approval ratings and his difficulty mobilizing public and Congressional support for prosecuting the war?

To showcase its program properly, Sixty Minutes would have led with something like this: "Revelations from a six month long FBI interrogation of Saddam Hussein conducted before his trial indicate that while the Iraqi dictator lacked weapons of mass destruction at the time of the American and Coalition attack in 2003, he fully intended to restart his WMD projects as soon as U.N. sanctions against Iraq were lifted. After months of elaborate interrogation by an Arabic speaking FBI agent, Saddam candidly acknowledged his plans. It would seem now that the US may well have had ample reason to attack Iraq, after all, though not for the exact reasons emphasized at the time."

Instead of that kind of news story, Scott Pelley leads Piro--an appealing, intelligent FBI agent of the kind that brings great credit to the bureau--on a somewhat rambling review of the extensive mental and emotional seduction of Saddam. Piro is presented as the FBI agent operationally in charge of Saddam's interrogation, but he clearly was part of a large team. The saga told on TV ruminates on such matters as Saddam's distrust of Osama bin Laden, the problems the FBI has finding Arabic speakers, and the terrible poetry Saddam wrote in prison and the way Piro flattered him about it. Then it turns finally to the gassing of the Kurds in 1998, a genocidal act for which Saddam told Piro he took personal responsibility and pronounced "necessary".

Only then does CBS have Pelley drop in this little handgrenade: "In fact, says Piro, Saddam intended to use weapons of mass destruction again someday.

"'Saddam had the engineers. The folks he needed to reconstruct his program were still there,'" FBI agent Piro reports.

"'What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?'

"'He wanted to reconstitute all of his W.M.D program--chemical, biological, even nuclear?'

As a matter of news judgment, I submit that if Saddam had told Piro that he really had no plans to start a new WMD program after the old one was dismantled, that would have been played up big by CBS and the mainstream media. But the fact that he said the opposite has been all but buried. The whole Piro interrogation of Saddam cries out for much more extensive coverage and maybe a Congressional hearing. Eventually, the whole story would make a fine documentary showing how the Iraq War, bad as it has been, probably spared Iraq and the world a much worse fate.

Meanwhile, even the conservative media seem to be missing the significance of this story. Most are simply ignoring the Piro interrogations altogether. The conservative online news service, NewsMax.com, does write about the CBS program, but mainly to take credit for having had it before CBS, citing an article from a new book by Ronald Kessler (The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack, Crown Forum books). NewsMax relegates Saddam's stated intention to reconstruct his WMD program to a minor theme in its story, the major theme of which is the fascinating interrogation project itself.

Am I alone in recalling the weight put on the WMD issue when we invaded Iraq? I remember, in fact, thinking that the WMD threat should not have been forced to carry so much of the argument, since it was only one of several reasons to remove Saddam (e.g., his continued threats to his neighbors, his provocative attempted assassination of former President George H. W. Bush, his financial support of terrorism against Israel, his succor for assorted terrorists-on-the-lamb, and especially his many violations of the Gulf War truce terms). Most of these reasons, alone, would have constituted a justifiable casus belli. But, largely for diplomatic reasons at the United Nations, the threat of WMD was emphasized. Later, after the investigation, that threat seemed to be discredited and with in, in many eyes, the whole justification for the war.

I'll bet the FBI and its agent George Piro have very good knowledge and memories on the subject. So, undoubtedly, does George W. Bush.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) told reporters yesterday that weapons of mass destruction had in fact been found in Iraq, despite acknowledgments by the White House and the insistence of the intelligence community that no such weapons had been discovered.

We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons, Santorum said.

The lawmakers pointed to an unclassified summary from a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center regarding 500 chemical munitions shells that had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran, which ended in 1988.

The U.S. military announced in 2004 in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active. Neither the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Last night, intelligence officials reaffirmed that the shells were old and were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction sought in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

If Bush changes his mind it's flip-flopping but if a Democrat and/or liberal does it he/she's just exercising his right to change their mind.

I just love pointing out blatant double standards which their seems to be a lot of in the liberal ideology.

What you fail to realize is that what is going on Washington right now is politics as usual on both sides. Both sides are playing the game to some extent. The liberals are just realllly bad at it.

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic,
different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barrack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first
black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive
that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law
professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with more
than 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human
Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a
state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the
Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs
committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council
and 6 years as the mayor of a town with fewer than 7,000 people, 20 months as
the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to
become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2
beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real
Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your
disabled wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the
proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other
option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen
daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a
prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community,
then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude," with at least one DWI conviction
and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once
was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the
USA, your family is extremely admirable.

I'm a McCain supporter in this election and I will be voting for him. Having said that, I don't think either candidates are perfect and I'm not sure McCain's economics plans will actually benefit this country right away, but I do know that Obama's economic plan will make our situation worse. That is the main reason I'm not voting for him. Taxing companies more will lose jobs...not create them. Raising taxes during an economic crisis leads to worse economic crisis....just look at what Hoover did. He raised taxes during a recession and it started the Great Depression. FDR started several goverment assisted programs to help and they actually extended the duration of the great depression. Obama wants to raise taxes and wants to institute new government assisted programs.

As for the allegations of him being born outside of the country....who knows. He claims he was born in Hawaii and if that is the case, show your birth certificate and be done with it. If you have nothing to hide, show it. Ya know. I feel that there have been many things that Obama has not been outright and honest about. If any other politician had the associations and the history as Obama has had.....their political career would be in the gutter. I do not understand this love affair the media has with Obama.

I do not trust Obama and let me reiterate that this is not a race thing. I don't think John McCain is a saint and I do know that all politicians lie to get elected but I just feel like John McCain has served this country all of his life and I would feel more comfortable with him in the oval office than a man we hardly know, who won't answer questions honestly about himself or his associations, and has very little experience.

into poverty, but you don't want the money it takes to care for these children to come out of your pocket???? Am I on the mark?

I guess this is another so-called way to sling mud at Obama. The rich republicans can't have it both ways. You either care for the unborn (welfare for their mothers) or you allow the mother the choice... Which is it?

Not all abortions are a form of birth control, ya' know. I knew a very religious lady that aborted her child due to hydrocephalus. The child would been born deformed/a vegetable. This would have put this lady at high risk. She prayed about it and soon after aborted the child. She had to live with that.

Not all situations are the same. Furthermore, you can't force your child to have a baby or to have an abortion. Either way, it's her body.

If the cartoon doesn't offend me, I am racist. If I didn't vote for Obama, I am racist. If I am not up in arms about something as silly as a political cartoon, I am racist. I have never dated or been married to a black man, does that make me racist? There are no black people who live in my community (it is very small), does that make us all racists? I do have several black friends, do I get a free pass for that? I go to movies that feature black actors, is that okay? I like to listen to the Motown channel on Sirius radio, is that okay? Oh, I like Whoopi Goldberg, Halle Berry, and I even think Michelle Obama is fairly attractive, do I get a free pass for that too? Oh, but I don't like Oprah, so that makes me a racist, right?

This argument is old as the hills and will never go away. To each his own, don't obsess about it.

You think I'm a hypocrit because you knew a flamboyant homosexual when you were growing up? That almost made sense....

Tell me, if you meet a homosexual and you don't approve of his/her mannerisms, does that give you the right to attack him? What happens if someone doesn't approve of your mannerisms?

you choose to start a grammar war, hurl personal insults, get thoroughly defeated by practically everyone on this board, then go crying to the moderator? We have a couple of American sayings (maybe Midwestern, you would be the expert on that, I suppose):

FYI, if you are transcribing for American accounts, you really should be familiar with the vernacular. Doctors often use slang in direct quotes and typing ''criminal'' for criminetly would make you look quite silly.

That's one step in the right direction. I hope he doesn't mean CREATE some facts.

If this is true though, it is cheap for the US to be involved with this company. Same thing though with the United Arab Emirites and their child camel jockeys (see link).

continued slamming of the President and this country. Ask yourself what you're really gaining by doing so. My political affiliation has NO bearing on this whatsoever. I expect people to behave appropriately on all forums. ForuMatrix is a website that is open to the entire world, not just the US and I am ashamed of some of what I read knowing that people in other countries are reading it too. Don't think for a minute that I am only pointing out the Liberal board. Far from it. I've had to come down on some posters on the Conservatives board, too. So, what this all comes down to is that respectful posting will be adhered to or I won't allow posting. We need to go back to old fashioned VALUES, if we think that way then the words we write won't be as cutting. You may not agree with me and that is your prerogative and I am not trying to censor you, rather I would prefer that you and others post in kind and with respect.

Those who cannot afford any insurance at all will get "Cadillac" plans (that's what fed employees receive) underwritten by the rest of us?! Meanwhile we continue to pay out the nose for our crappy policies, which will be less than the "Cadillac" plans, while we are paying for the ne'er do wells' "Cadillac" coverage?

That's not the kind of "change" most of us want, although I can certainly see why the recipients of this "handout" would think it's a great deal!!!

At least somebody is honest. If you Google something like that, you'd get all kinds of info that conflicts with the others. Nice of you to do this.

Obama said he would withdraw troops from IRAQ and add troops to AFGHANISTAN. Those would be 2 different wars. We aren't at war with "the middle east."

Obama said he would not punish his daughters if they made a mistake with "a baby". He did not say a pregnancy, or a fetus. I heard him say that.

Also he voted to allow babies that survived an abortion to be left to die, not given any assistance after they were born alive.

Maureen Dowd

I�ve been in Alaska only a week, but I�m already feeling ever so much smarter about Russia.

I can�t quite see it from my hotel window, but, hey, I know it�s out there somewhere, beyond all the stuffed bears and cruise ships and glaciers and oil derricks.

The proximity of the country from which William Seward bartered to buy Alaska for $7 million � Seward�s icebox � is so illuminating that I suddenly realize that we would commit a grave error by overestimating Russia�s economic strength. After all, it represents only 2.8 percent of the world�s G.D.P., even though its gross domestic product has ballooned from $200 billion in 1999 to $1.7 trillion this year.

But I overanalyze.

An Arctic blast of action has swept into the 2008 race, making thinking pass�. We don�t really need to hurt our brains studying the world; we just need the world to know we�re capable of bringing a world of hurt to the world if the world continues to be hell-bent on misbehaving.

Two weeks after being thrown onto a national ticket, and moments after being speed-briefed by McCain foreign-policy advisers, our new Napoleon in bunny boots (not the Pamela Anderson kind, but the knock-offs of the U.S. Army Extreme Cold Weather Vapor Barrier Boots) is ready to face down the Russkies and start a land war over Georgia, and, holy cow, what business is it of ours if Israel attacks Iran?

The trigger-happy John McCain has indeed found a soul mate. Trigger squared. In Fairbanks on Thursday, at a deployment ceremony for her son who is going to Iraq, Governor Palin followed the lead of McCain and W. in fusing Osama bin Laden�s diabolical work on 9/11 and the mission in Iraq. She told the departing troops, �You�ll be there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of Americans.�

Asked by Charlie Gibson what insight into Russian actions her Alaskan proximity gave her, Sarah blithely replied: �They�re our next-door neighbors. And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.�

Being a next-door neighbor is not quite enough, though. If Sarah had been reading about the world she feels so confident about leading rather than just parroting by rote what Randy Scheunemann and the neocons around McCain drilled into her last week � Drill, baby, drill! � she might have realized that as heinous as Russia�s behavior toward Georgia was, it was not completely unprovoked. The State Department has let it be known that it warned McCain�s friend, Misha, the hotheaded president of Georgia, not to send troops in to crush the rebellion in two breakaway states.

And she might not have had to clench her jaw and play for time when Gibson raised the Bush doctrine, the wacko preemption philosophy that so utterly changed the world.

The really scary part of the Palin interview was how much she seemed like W. in 2000, and not just the way she pronounced nu-cue-lar. She had the same flimsy but tenacious adeptness at saying nothing, the same generalities and platitudes, the same restrained resentment at being pressed to be specific, as though specific is the province of silly eggheads, not people who clear brush at the ranch or shoot moose on the tundra.

Just as W. once could not name the General-General running Pakistan, so Palin took a position on Pakistan that McCain had derided as na�ve when Obama took it.

�We must not, Charlie, blink, Charlie, because, Charlie, as I�ve said, Charlie, before, John McCain has said, Charlie, that � and remember here, Charlie, we�re talking about John McCain, Charlie, who, Charlie, is John McCain and I won�t be blinking, Charlie.�

She tried to finesse her previous church comments about Iraq, asking worshipers to pray �that there is a plan, and that plan is God�s plan.� Earnestly repeating after her tutors, she said she had meant to echo Abraham Lincoln, that in war we must pray that we are on God�s side rather than that he is on ours. But her original comments sounded more W. than Abe � taking your policy and ideology and giving it the hallowed mantle of a mission from God.

Sarah has single-handedly ushered out the �Sex and the City� era, and made the sexy new model for America a retro one � the glamorous Pioneer Woman, packing a gun, a baby and a Bible.

Her explosion onto the scene made Obama seem even more like a windy, wispy egghead. Like W., Sarah has the power of positive unthinking. But now we may want to think about where ignorance and pride and no self-doubt has gotten us. Being quick on the trigger might be good in moose hunting, but in dealing with Putin, a little knowledge might come in handy.