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November 09, 2005

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Interesting related data point: you know those aluminum tubes we caught so much grief for claiming were necessarily part of a nuclear program? Guess who was telling us that?

France.

In fact, I’ll just cite one more thing. The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by god, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?

(according to Lawrence Wilkerson, who seems to carry great cache with the anti-war crowd, lately. Much more here.)

Thought that was interesting -- and perhaps indicative of the tumultuous state of prewar intelligence.

i'd love to see proof besides republican say-so that the french spun the aluminum tubes in question.

brendan, timelines show that republicans knew they were lying.

bush's yellowcake state of the union came months after joe wilson's trip to niger and report back to the cia that the documents were unverifiable.

condi's claim about the aluminum tubes being "pretty much only" suited for nuclear centrifuges came months after nuclear experts in our country told the cia the tubes weren't for nuclear centrifuges.

their bioweapon point man chalabi's been a convicted embezzler (to the tune of millions) for decades now. one of the "bioweapons experts" he recommended to the cia was a drunkard called "screwball." the cia didn't believe him, but you bet the bush white house repeated everything he said to the american people in the scariest terms.

they also intentionally distorted the timing of al qaeda entering iraq. sure, al qaeda's in iraq now that we've created utter chaos and hatred in iraq. but if there were al qaedans in iraq before we got there, there were fewer there than in the u.s. pre-september 11. saddam and osama mutually dislike(d?) each other.

what else... let's see... ah yes! cheney was still making a fuss about mohammed atta meeting an iraqi in czechoslavakia well after the fbi had said there were no travel or bank records to justify such a claim.

the difference between what the cia knew, what the bush white house was telling people on their propaganda outlet fox "news," and what congress was told will be fascinating, if the republicans ever start the investigation they've been stalling for two years.

but you're right, this will be frustrating. america is still too busy (or is it really stupid?) to understand this.

Of course Democrats believed the tales of weapons of mass destruction. I believed it, too.

I believed it because of what I was told by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Condi Rice.

To try to make the claim Democrats had all the same information the administration had is patently ridiculous.

i'd love to see proof besides republican say-so that the french spun the aluminum tubes in question.
Well, all we've got is the word of Lawrence Wilkerson. But that's from the same speech in which he made the "cabal" comments that the anti-war crowd were touting far and wide. I assumed from his presence on approximately 95% of the Lefty blogs that you guys found him credible.

Alternately, there's Hillary Clinton's statements

"The intelligence from Bush 1 to Clinton to Bush 2 was consistent" in concluding Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was trying to develop a nuclear capability, Clinton said this morning. And Saddam's expulsion of weapons inspectors and "the behavior" of his regime "pointed to a continuing effort" to produce WMD, she added.

The senator said she did her own "due diligence" by attending classified briefings on Capitol Hill and at the White House and Pentagon and also by consulting national security officials from the Clinton administration whom she trusts. "To a person, they all agreed with the consensus of the intelligence" that Saddam had WMD.

And others. I suspect that some intelligence data was distorted prior to the war. But I'm not sold on the thin gruel that has been presented so far.

When an Administration (any Administration, not just this one) decides on a course of action, it sells that decision to the public. In the course of the selling, there will inevitably be untruths told - both intentional and unintentional. There is no credible reason why the Bush Administration's marketing of the Iraq war would be an exception to this natural order of things. Those who would have us believe such poppycock are either brainwashers or brainwashed. In fact, it seems pretty clear to most of us that the opposite is true - that this was a slick sales job, worthy of the most unscrupulous of used-car salesmen.

Rumsfeld stated he "knew" where the WMDs were located. Bush and Rice warned of a "mushroom cloud". Cheney cagily tied 9/11 to Saddam Hussein at every turn. And on and on and on.


Try this on Google:

Clinton Iraq 1998

Jami, I hate to ruin your fantasy but Joe Wilson actually CONFIRMED that Iraq had approached Niger in 1999 in an effort to purchase yellowcake. (see the Senate Intelligence Report) Wilson never even saw the suspected forgeries so how could he have commented on them? (The yellowcake intelligence was not based on these documents.)

The Butler report also confirms that Iraq was attempting to purchase yellowcake from sources in Africa.

The Senate Intelligence Report can be found here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_rpt/


The Butler report can be found here:

http://www.archive2.official-documents.co.uk/document/deps/hc/hc898/898.pdf

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