Any of those "totally naïve" people care to comment?

Molly Ivins is collecting her thoughts, just give the bitch a minute...

I am curious as to what intelligence Congress got to see before voting for force. Did they get any conflicting intel that we are seeing trickle out after the war, or was it screened by the administration to help make their case. I know for one that they were given the Nigeria nukes stuff which turned out to be bogus, but that's after they vote. In my own opinion, a 9/11 link or a nuclear threat is what I personally required to support the war. I never saw a 9/11 link, and now that the nuke thing is bogus, I feel misled. I would probably be a bit more pissed if I was in Congress, told we had evidence of their nuke program, voted for force, only to be told afterward that the one piece of evidence I needed to vote for force was complete crap.

My first question to you, indy, would be why that was what you needed? Why isn't Iraq's failure to comply with inspections over 12 years enough? Second, is why you think Ansar-al-Islam isn't a link to Al-Qaeda?

The third thing is that I've seen over and over here is that WE fabricated the NIger, not Nigeria, nuclear shipments. Let's recall that thatwas GIVEN to us, by none other than the french.

Simon! Naïveté you say? Those folks are busy sniffin' hydrogen, helium or both. They couldn't be bothered with pondering such things as lyin', cheatin', stealin' or shreddin' for that matter. You are left (well, I'm right) with those of us who find the Senator's remarks less than 'naïve' you might say.

Johnnymozart - Would that be a souflé? :-) I would term the 'French Connection' to be the more commonly used French verb here, soufler, 'to blow'. If you get my drift. Maybe we could call it a Freedom Blow. I'm stretchin' here johnny, but there's just WAY too much serious chatter about hydrogen and helium to expect a whole lot of serious dialogue. Sorry.

I know we did not fabricate the Niger nuke documents, but Condi Rice said Sunday that some down in the bowels of the CIA might have known it was bogus.... What?? That whole thing is still a bit fishy to me, either our intelligence people are a complete incompetent joke (which I hesitate to believe) judging by how quickly it was deemed a forgery by others (IAEA), or it was a political choice to use less than credible evidence. I really think that wiithout a nuclear component to Iraq, the case for war would have been way tougher than it already was.

As to why that was what was needed, I am really not that scared of the capabilites of mustard gas, anthrax and such because of the incredible technical difficulties in dispersing them to harm lots of people, especially in the continental US. I mean, my parents tought me when I was little not to mix the ammonia bleach or I would make mustard gas.

I never said Ansar-al-Islam is not a link to Al Qaeda, but I certainly haven't seen anything linking them to Saddam either. They operated only North of the no fly zone, and were not there prior to the no fly zone. I don't recall them working together. And support for Hamas and Hezbollah, to me, like most of our leaders, is not an imminent threat to our secutiry either.

Failure to comply with the resolutions doesn't bother me or our security here at home in my opinion, not to the level of war being a necessity.

PtG?
Turnip?
Youdon'twanttoknow?
MW?
Hello?
Must be a "Meeting of the Minds" conference going on at one of the more militant antiAmerican mosques, so a number of people aren't available for comment.
Oh, well....

Indy, you asked if it was the same intelligence they know now?
DuH!!!!! you answered your own question. Do you somehow think that there is more now than there was then?
One of the chief offenders in this category is Presidential wanna-be Sen. Bob Graham. In December, when he was still Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he said
We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction. [Emphasis added.]

maybe you should read the article......

Yea indy, who cares if he develops WMD in his own country, and kills hundreds of thousands in his spare time. It's of no concern to the USA people like you, who are just too busy watching porn tv, and thinking about the girl next door, and when her husband is going to be away

Don't know how accurate it is, but there is the story of our top two Al Qaeda guys in custody saying, a year ago, that there was no Iraq/Al Qaeda connection. i do know they have given us a lot of other invaluable intelligence that has helped thwart Al Qaeda ops. Personally, I'm fairly certain that this true, simply because if just one dude at Gitmo linked Al Qaeda to Iraq, I'm pretty sure the administration would have let us know.

There is a DIA report that states, "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has — or will — establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities,".

No Bubba, I asked what intelligence Congress was "allowed" to see prior to voting for force. Did they get this info, I personally don't know, but if they didn't, why not? Combine that with the fake nuke docs, I find that kind of disturbing.

I just read Waxman's letter to Bush somewhere on Command Post, and it appears that, at least reagarding the nuke intel, that he is getting a lot of his intelligence from the media at the same time we do.

Why do you sound angry?

Many people died all over the workd, so what makes us decide that this is the country that we are going to attack. What made me decide was the government telling me that they were a threat to me, which was a lie. Bush needs to answer for this.

Dave

How about kiss as in French Kiss?

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. military units assigned to track down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have run out of places to look and are getting time off or being assigned to other duties, even as pressure mounts on President Bush to explain why no banned arms have been found.

After nearly three months of fruitless searches, weapons hunters say they are now waiting for intelligence experts to take over the effort, relying more on leads from interviews and documents.

"It doesn't appear there are any more targets at this time," said Lt. Col. Keith Harrington, whose team has been cut by more than 30 percent. "We're hanging around with no missions in the foreseeable future."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=1&u=/ap/20030609/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_idled_hunt

Anthony, I was workin' with the rhymin' thang here, and now y'all got me confusilated. Kiss does not rhyme with that thar naiveté...

So - No kissin', As a matter of fact, what do I do with Freedom then? Throw it out with that thar baathwater?

Jacuqes - Is that name thar, be Francaise? Well anyhow, that story? Old news, thar JACQUES.

sophia, there you go with that "liar" stuff again. Prove to me that pres. Bush lied about anything.

Jaques you idiot, rehashed news from last month? are you kidding me?

I guess those 1400 are going to have nothing to do when they get there to check the 400 or so places yet to be looked at

Dave, do you notice a pattern here? they seem to come in groups, and PtG is posting in other strings as well.
I'm beginning to think Ptg has a multiple personality disorder.....

Dve,

Old to some, new to others.

Bubba,

Are you able to make a comment that isn't suffused with personal insults? What, perchance, did I do to merit such? I wrote in an earlier comment that there is too much vitriol here, and I mean it.

Let me think about that jaques.........in your case no, and there is a reason

can you post something that isn't a bunch of horse shit?
Can you think rationaly before you post something?
Is you mind made up, that no matter what, and how much damming evidence there is about saddam hussian, all the dead people clawing in their graves, asking you WHY did you let that bastard kill us?
That you think it was wrong to take out a mass murdering butcher?

thats why jaques.

Plus jaques, what goes around comes around. Try remember who insulted who first.

Bubba - They be sploogin' all at once, sortalike them thar whatchacallemthar 'Sperm' whales.

They are all swimming, General PtG sank his ship, plus MW shot the general in the record longest string

So Indy, if Al Qaeda uses cyclosarin gas given to him by SH and kills only 10 people or 100 people in a building instead of 12,000 in a city block because of its dispersal, then that's ok, huh? I hope that that is not what you are suggesting.

SH ran that country. Ansar-al-Islam could not have operated in the country without his knowledge, no-fly zone or not. And although I'm not sure a DIRECT link between Iraq and 9/11 would ever be proven, why does it have to be? Is it so unreasonable to think that their goals are the same? That they wouldn't both strike at us if given the chance? Sure their philosophies are different, but their goals remain the same, more power, more influence, and the destruction of anyone who stands in the way of that. So why does there need to be a direct connection to 9/11? Plus you never really answered my question: why was 12 years of obfuscation with inspections not sufficient grounds for you?

I would like to hear the context of Dr. Rice's interview. What program was she on?

|
|What made me decide was the government telling me that they
|were a threat to me, which was a lie. Bush needs to answer for
|this
|

I am perplexed as to why you think that Saddam was not a threat.

In September 2001 a handful of, albeit well-organised, terrorists managed to murder 3000+ people by hijacking a few planes.

Now, given what a handful of terrorists can do, imagine if they are terrorists backed by a state. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq has immeasurably many more resources to offer. Both in money and in knowledge / weapons.

Now, as to the Big Question, was Saddam pursuing a Chem/Bio weapons programme? Only a fool would make the assumption that he was not. All hard and circumstantial evidence pointed to the fact that he was. And, in fact, many times we discovered that he was up to more than we ever knew.

Now, whether these weapons were lying around on shelves ready to be found was another question. IMO it is a definite failing in the intelligence gathering if that is what they were expecting - as it is evident that is not what we have found.

The worrying question is where are they?

Many are jumping to conclusions regarding WMD and are baying for blood from leaders and intelligence.

Now, given how badly the US Administration / US Intelligence were shown up in Sep 2001, if you were given a range of intelligence reports, which reports are you going to favour - those that might lead to a Sep11x100 or those that at worst would oust an evil regime.

The world changed in Sep 2001, but many of the whiners havent really grasped it.
There are evil people plotting evil things, and its no time to go by the book...

The analogy that I always draw is the one of the rabid dog: If you had a rabid dog roving your neighbourhood, would you wait until it bit somebody before you take it out - or would you use common sense?.

-Nick

Great analogy, mind if I use it occasionally?

Whiners: but how do you KNOW the dog is rabid? I mean, its only foaming at the mouth and bitten one other person! :)

Oh wait......three other people.

Mark Steyn's comments:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;$sessionid$0BYHTWXETB4N1QFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/opinion/2003/06/08/do0801.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2003/06/08/ixopinion.html

"...If you notice, the axis of weasels (France, Germany, Russia) and its short-pants league (Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada), while undoubtedly enjoying Mr Blair's discomfort, have nevertheless declined to join in the show-us-the-sarin taunts. They know what their intelligence services say (assuming, for the purposes of argument, Luxembourg has an intelligence service), and it's the same as the British and Americans...."

"The President has always been so straightforward that, in an interview with ITV 15 months ago, Trevor McDonald seemed to have difficulty taking yes for an answer. "I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go," Bush told him.

"And, of course, if the logic of the war on terror means anything," Sir Trevor responded, "then Saddam must go?"
"That's what I just said," said the President. "The policy of my government is that he goes."

"So you're going to go after him?" pressed Sir Trevor, determined not to let Bush get away with these evasions.

"As I told you, the policy of my government is that Saddam Hussein not be in power."

And now he's not. Mr Blair could never put it like that. And the moment he prevailed upon Bush to go the extra mile with the UN, it was inevitable that there would be a fair amount of what I believe the British call "total bollocks"."

I've already posted Jim Hoagland and Robert Kagan saying much the same things.

This discussion is becoming tiresome.

Agreed, Gabriel.

Bubba, Dave, leave off the multiple personality argument, would you? It's irrelevant.

If any of the victims honestly need to conceal their identity in order to make their arguments heard, someone's guilty of an ad hominem attack on their previous identity.

If any of the victims need to change their identity so as to disassociate themself from past mistakes, they're not being intellectually honest with themselves by denying that they've ever changed their opinion. OTOH, they might be *afraid* to admit to changing their mind on something -- even if its a small, insignificant detail -- for fear of having their entire argument torn up by an ad logicam attack. That's a problem that currently infests modern rhetoric on all sides.

If they're trying to artificially inflate their numbers so as to appear like they're making the popular decision, they're guilty of argumentum ad popularum... just because it's popular doesn't make it true.

If you're worried about reducing the numbers of people supporting the opposition as a reliable counter argument, well, *you're* guilty of ad popularum.

This isn't to say that your turnip appelations aren't witty. Many of your antagonists are guilty of faulty logic, and/or are victims of insufficient data. I know it is very, very hard to present logical arguments in the face of concerted rhetoric, but you must try.

Operation Peninsula Strike is ongoing, reports Fox News. 397 Baathists have been rounded up. Finally, we're taking decisive action. We need to keep it up.

No link, sorry.

indy
"I really think that wiithout a nuclear component to Iraq, the case for war would have been way tougher than it already was."
You really don't even begin to understand the significance of those 2 trailers do you?

"As to why that was what was needed, I am really not that scared of the capabilites of mustard gas, anthrax and such because of the incredible technical difficulties in dispersing them to harm lots of people, especially in the continental US."
You've never been on a NYC Subway at rush hour have you? Where the fuck do you live anyway?

"I never said Ansar-al-Islam is not a link to Al Qaeda, but I certainly haven't seen anything linking them to Saddam either."
You obviously have no concept of how governments and policy work either.

"And support for Hamas and Hezbollah, to me, like most of our leaders, is not an imminent threat to our secutiry either."
neither was Al Qaeda prior to 9/11...

"Failure to comply with the resolutions doesn't bother me or our security here at home in my opinion, not to the level of war being a necessity"
Then you aren't paying attention are you son?

Gabriel,
/(France, Germany, Russia) and its short-pants league (Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada), while undoubtedly enjoying Mr Blair's discomfort, have nevertheless declined to join in the show-us-the-sarin taunts./

I dunno about the rest of them but I saw Putin during his press conference with Tony Blair making exactly those taunts. That was over a month ago.

I'd have to agree with Senator Lugar that there is nothing new in these arguments. Andrew Wilkie in Australian intelligence resigned before the war saying that the intelligence was faulty, British intelligence leaked that Blair's claims of daily reports of links between Al Qaeda and Saddam weren't true, and the Pentagon was so unimpressed with the CIA's assessment of the threat from Saddam that they had to set up a 'Team B' type intelligence group (Rumsfeld likes them of course).

Claiming that the present concerns are 'revisionism' just doesn't make sense. They're not new.

Sean, the main reason France, Germany and Russia were so fervently opposed to the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with concerns of humanity or any other benevolent pursuits; Their sole concern was money either owed them by Saddam from mutual business dealings or money to be made from future business with the tyrant. All three of those countries have very good intelligence agencies. All three had to be aware of the atrocities Saddam was inflicting on his people(subjects?). They were also well aware that he WAS manufacturing and stockpiling WMD- Blind Man Blix wasn't sent there by the UN to see an optometrist.
France was also selling Saddam a few items that were a no- no according to UN sanctions that they themselves had signed off on, including rocket fuel they "smuggled" to Iraq via an Asian connection and then into Syria as a conduit to Saddam's country.
Saddam's fall was going to cost the "Axis of Weasel" a lot of revenue, and those Eurofux had to fight tooth and nail to stop us from killing the goose that laid the golden egg. They became desperate and the rhetoric got out of hand, especially when they realized that nothing they tried was going to prevent the inevitable from happening.
It did, and what you hear coming from them now is a lot of bitterness, as much now from their loss of revenues from business with Saddam as their losing a lot of face as all their dire predictions of a protracted war and tens of thousands more casualties than there actually were proved wrong.
These are proud old countries, a lot older than ours, and there's a lot of jealousy at the fact that an upstart nation that's barely over 200 years old has already surpassed all of them in terms of inventiveness, wealth and military might. The U.S. is powerful more than just militarily, we are also the world's leading economic entity and, far and beyond, the global leader in technology. So yeah, there's a lot of that jealousy stuff going around out there.
Having not only lost on the Iraq dispute, but also swept aside in the lucrative rebuilding stage, they are not happy campers and all they have left to do is try to get even with Bush and Blair, even if it means altering some of their old arguments a bit to do so.
Which is good for some, I suppose: Someone's got to give the American(or are they?) liberals a flag to rally 'round, as pitiful as they may look.
Several years ago, when I was TDA at Treasure Island for a couple of months in the winter, Bing Crosby owned Channel 3 there(in San Francisco) and every Christmas he came on and sang "white Christmas". He had gotten pretty old by then and his voice was cracking, and there was a really sad look in his eyes like he knew his career was in its final days. When I hear liberals still flogging the WMD horse and grasping at nothing to make feeble points in a feebler attempt to discredit the greatest president we've had in a lonnnnng time, I think of that sad "has been" look Crosby maintained when he was singing on the tube that morning. The liberals have become tragic caricatures of men and women.
We went to Iraq. We toppled the worst monster since Adolf Hitler. We eliminated a place of respite for terrorists, a place of training facilities for terrorists and a significant source of financing for terrorists. We will solve the puzzle of the WMDs, given time- as they say, "it all comes out in the wash". There's no doubt(among most) that the WMDs will be proven to exist, and I feel sorry for the liberals when they do, because then they'll have to find an even dumber issue to flog for months and months.
I lied, I won't feel sorry for 'em at all.

Most impressive Wolf. Unfortunately, your comments will fall on deaf/blind ears. The argument is not about WMD's or a lack thereof to date, but the fact that our wonderful country is finally taking the fight to the "arab" street. The liberals are scared and showing it with their continue hashing of dead arguments. We invaded Iraq, kicked their collective asses, and now, we will rebuild them as we always have done with ANY country we war against, and they will be better off. The might of our great nation frightens people. Since the taking of the American embassy in iran, the bombing of the Marine barracks in beirut, the first attack on the World Trade Center, the USS Cole bombing, etc, the cockroaches of the arab world have rejoiced in the deaths of our people. By not retaliating in kind, we have given them the delusion we are afraid of them. Hence, the 9/11 attacks. For people willing to die for bullshit, you have to respond in kind. While the debate rages that we have increased our risk of terrorist attack might sell newspapers, its bullshit. We can no longer allow ourselves to sit back and say, "Stop or I'll say stop again". The war in Iraq was a warning and they better heed the call.

Senator Luger said:
"to dredge all of this [up] as somehow a national scandal or people being beguiled or so forth is nonsense unless people are totally naïve."

So in fact Senator Luger may be write but not in the way he intented. Consider that the NYT/CBS poll taken on 3/14/03 showed that close to 50% of Americans believe Saddam was "personally involved" in Sept. 11.

Right after Sept. 11, 2001, when Americans were asked open-ended questions about who was behind the attacks, only 3% mentioned Iraq or Hussein.

In a Knight Ridder poll conducted in January 2003, 44% of Americans reported that either "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. Of course the answer is zero.

Now. How did so many Americans get so confused about the fact?

Good question, Anthony. I'll bite. How?

Indy.... dude or dudette... personally I dont care if you are satisfied. when did you make yourself one of our leaders. Indy this essentially is chat news discussion, not the Halls of Congresss.. You sound like Hillary Clinton and by the way you have a lousy football team

I'm asking you for the answer?

Hmmmmmmmmm. Now I'm perplexed, Anthony. Was that a rhetorical question, or were you asking if I was asking YOU for the answer? The answer is yes... Now it's your turn. ;-)

ok you, guys, take a chance please go to my lone post on the us soldier killed thread. I worked really hard on it. :)

Johnnymozart - your post on the lone-soldier-killed thread is a BRILLIANT spoof !!!

Dave:

That was a question. It was not meant to be rhetorical.

We havent found Saddam yet either, but we're still fairly certain he exists.

Anthony,

I think Dave Dube was looking for YOUR answer to YOUR question? Maybe?

Thanks ref.

------What made me decide was the government telling me that they were a threat to me, which was a lie.-----

Prove it

What? Are you having a conversation with yourself?

Anthony,
This one is not really for you, but... okay. It's mainly for Pass the Gas, but you can peruse these quotes as well.

http://www.rightwingnews.com/archives/week_2003_06_08.PHP#001026

Thanks to InstaPundit.

Hmmmmmm.....

Thanks, Teacher.
And Instapundit.

Seems a few of these Dems, in their valiant search for "the truth", have forgotten where they stood when it was convenient to do so. I'll bet none of them reminds everybody of these statements anytime soon.

Hmmmmmm.....

How about some critical thinking?

Anthony - You said : Now. How did so many Americans get so confused about the fact?

Which fact?

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaa Haaa Haaa

Whatareyouhindingfrom?

Anthony - Would that fall into the 'critical' or 'profound' category? Curious.

Anthony - Is it me that's naïve, or is it you? Curious.

Anthony - Is it H for Hydrogen, H for Helium or H for HOTAIR? Curious. ;-)

Just critique it. Profound is optional.

Where is everyone. Maybe after yesterday, they're all lining up to see that pork-side shrink. SHIT!!!!
I said again.

If you think I don't know you know then your naive. ;)

Gee Dave you're getting Curiouser and Curiouser with time.

How to you abbreviate Laugh-a-little? lol?

Anthony - SSSSHHHHHHHHH. I have not pulled Pass from out of his deep, semi-conscious, semi-coherent and barely-there state. He likes the fine Corynthian leather on the port-side couch.

LOL

Anthony,
It isn't that I haven't been thinkin' profoundly or anything like that. I been feedin' statspigs at the statstrough, and they're oinkin' for more. Gotta go for a bit, but I'll check back later with some 'criticality' :-)

Somebodywantstoknow:

It you. I didn't even think to check the email.

The lack of connection between 9/11 and SH. Or as 'Bush 1' use to say SaDAMM.

Anthony,

:-) I wear a buncha hats - but none of them have flowers on them...or fig leaves, nor am I 'angelic'.

OBTW - b4 I go. Do you own the outfit, run the outfit, or write the javacrap? Curious ;-)

Now your talking in riddles? I rarely get them.

Anthony - holsys.com - ring any BELLs? Or...just one?

holsys is a site hosting company.

Anthony asked:...In a Knight Ridder poll conducted in January 2003, 44% of Americans reported that either "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. Of course the answer is zero.

Now. How did so many Americans get so confused about the fact?

Here are some quotes and links to help answer the question. The Bush administration repeatedly linked al Qaeda and Iraq, and even alleged falsely at one point that Mohammed Atta had met with "Iragi officials" in Prague, as if to imply that Iraq had something to do with 9/11.

I just did a little Google search over lunchtime, to see what I can find... watch the web of lies deteriorate. Psychologists talk about something called the "sleeper effect," which means that even after the source of some information is discredited, the information itself may still be believed. This is a favorite Bush administration technique: say something plausible, but false. People will remember the statement, but not whether it was true or not. As Anthony notes, lots of people thought Saddam had something to do with 9/11, an idea cleverly planted by Bush & Co.

Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, August 21, 2002;
Iraq has frequently been cited by administration officials as a haven for al Qaeda fighters who have fled the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan. But what is new, officials said, is the number and senior rank of the al Qaeda members who have been mentioned in recent classified intelligence reports as being in Iraq.

Thursday, September 26, 2002 Posted: 1:28 PM EDT (1728 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's national security adviser Wednesday said Saddam Hussein has sheltered al Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad and helped train some in chemical weapons development -- information she said has been gleaned from captives in the ongoing war on terrorism.

http://www.azcentral.com/community/nie/lessons/lesson-0130.html (Jan 30, 2003)
In his State of the Union speech, the president declared that information “from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody” indicates that Hussein “aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda.”

http://www.praguepost.com/P02/2002/20605/news1a.php
The Czech envoy to the UN has confirmed that an Iraqi agent met with suspected Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, in the latest rebuke to widespread U.S. media reports dismissing the Prague encounter as a fabrication.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/11/inv.atta.meetings/
Atta met twice with Iraqi intelligence
U.S. officials revealed Thursday that Mohammed Atta -- one of the suspected suicide hijackers -- had two meetings, not one, with Iraqi intelligence officers in Prague, Czech Republic.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F7081FF9345B0C758DDDAB0994D9404482
A NATION CHALLENGED: INTELLIGENCE; New Clue Fails to Explain Iraq Role in Sept. 11 Attack
Revelation that suspected Sept 11 hijacking mastermind Mohamed Atta met in Prague with Iraqi diplomat last April has emerged as object lesson in limits of intelligence reports, rather than as cornerstone of case against Iraq; Iraqi opposition figures insist diplomat was important spy, but US officials say he was minor fuctionary who happens to have same name;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1961668.stm
Hijacker 'did not meet Iraqi agent'

American investigators have said an alleged meeting between one of the 11 September hijackers and an Iraqi spy did not take place - dismissing a key link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the attacks. ... Last year, US and Czech officials said that the chief hijacker, Mohammed Atta, had met an Iraqi agent in Prague.

Tuesday, March 11, 2003
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/11/Iraq.Qaeda.link/
Selling an Iraq-al Qaeda connection: Some critics blame TV news for making Baghdad new enemy
Does Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein provide assistance to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda? It's a case the Bush administration has tried hard to make...
These assertions, however, might be as good as the case gets for U.S. officials linking the terror network to Iraq...

There's lots more, and it's easy to find..

Pass woke up.
Gee. It looks like Smoke and Mirrors

Anthony - I was just curious. I use a legitimate email address - always have, always will. ISP has filtering in place (I dump about 600 per week), and I'm firewalled to boot. I thought maybe you were using a legitimate one as well. Not an issue with me, I was just curious.

I think the al-Qaeda link is in many ways more interesting than the WMD question in terms of the public being misled. Just about everyone, from Hans Blix to Jacques Chirac, thought Saddam was trying to create banned weapons, or at the very least had failed to account for those we knew he once had. Governments may have 'sexed up' intelligence dossiers on weapons, but they did at least have solid if circumstantial evidence that they were out there somewhere.

I don't think that there was ever the same confidence about Iraqi links to Bin Laden's terrorists (as opposed to those in Gaza and the West Bank), yet after the war a large number of people seem to think that Iraq had some role to play in the attacks on New York and Washington. Talk about your news management.

Anthony -- what are you saying?

"You really don't even begin to understand the significance of those 2 trailers do you?"

Didn't the Observer reveal that those trailers derived from a system sold to Iraq in 1986 for producing hydrogen for artillery spotting balloons?

wetzel - It's best to let sleeping dogs lie for the time being. Datestamps on equipment in trailer one indicate the pieces were built in 2002, five years AFTER Brittain sold hydrogen producing equipment to Iraq.

Pass:

Your links makes some of the arguements for war look like smoke and mirrors.

I never thought you would take it any other way. But I see why you weren't sure.

Thanks for the links.

Did you see the newest thread on the blog?

Dave
They won't be 'lying' for long. Dave have you reloaded the main thread page lately?

No, I hadn't seen that. I'm sure it will turn out once again that everybody is a stupid idiot.

When I saw your response earlier, I thought maybe you meant that I was doing something with smoke and mirrors. Don't know why I would get paranoid hanging around this neighborhood...!

I'm pretty busy today, don't really have the energy to take the full weight of the abuse. As I said, I refresh my screen every once in a while to see what's new, but I hadn't seen this new one. I'll probably jump in a t some point, maybe tomorrow. Maybe a word here and there...

... but I thought Bubba already proved that they were for producing biological weapons... <scratches head quizzically>

Anthony - Dave's not here, man... :-) CHEECH...

Pass:

Did you get the import of Senator Luger's statement. I notice that you didn't comment on it.

Anythony, I didn't see anything to comment on, maybe I'm missing something. A Republican senator takes the party line... seems kind of obvious, but like I say, maybe I missed something (about to go home, getting late).

Yah, right Pass. And I'm blind, deaf and dumb as well. GEEEEEEEEESH. Check out the link I left just for you, ifn' you want to discuss lies, prevarication, prefabrication, or just plain LIES. Makes nonevermind to me, but your 'liberal' friends been lyin' as well...

Dave, I just went thru the unpleasant exercise of text-searching every one of your smug, sarcastic comments in this thread, and I don't see any link.

Pass and Dave:

On second thought I mispoke. Didn't mean to send you on a wild goose chase.

Senator Luger said:
"to dredge all of this [up] as somehow a national scandal or people being beguiled or so forth is nonsense unless PEOPLE are totally naïve."

What PEOPLE is he talking about?

There is something PtG seems to be confused about (well, one of the things he is confused about).

Lying is one thing--to knowingly make false statements with intent to decieve. Exaggeration is another--to say that the evidence means more than it really does. It can be done willfully, or through wishful thinking.

But there is one other thing. That is when you have all the evidence you can get, and it is the best you can get, but it turns out to still not be good enough to keep you from being wrong. This one happens in physics all the time. It involves making false statements, but I've never heard it called lying.

Until now.

PtG confuses all three kinds of false statements. He's not the only one.

Let me restate it once more: France and the UN inspection teams had substantially the same opinions about Iraq's WMD that this Administration and the PREVIOUS Administration did.

In the absence of inspectors from 1998 - 2003, was everyone supposed to have psychic powers to know what Iraq was up to?

According to the Administrations's critics, nobody except Bush. If HE turns out wrong, he was lying.

But let's be frank. The WMD is the only thing, so far, that the Administration has been wrong about. It is the only point the antiwar people have left. They won't give it up ever.

Doesn't matter now, what is found when or how much. It will always be "not enough to be a threat" or "planted", depending on the sanity of the particular critic.

Which critics apparently expect us to believe that Bush lied to provoke a war which would prove him to be a lliar.

Don't waste our time.

Gabriel:

The idea that Bush lied is only one possible explanation. It is possible the individual or individuals in his administration lied to him or misinformed him. It is possible that in their zeal, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Pearle, Bennett and the rest of the pro-Likud neo-cons, who are so hellbent on an American Empire, mislead our President. It could be that the intelligence agencies made a few mistakes along the way. It could they were pressured. But something went wrong.

You may recall this better than I do. Did France actually say that they were certain that Saddam still had WMDs? Did the UN say that? Because President Bush definitely did.

Do you believe that the administration was right about a link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam?

The president was certainly right about many aspects of the humanitarian argument.

Most critics of the administration do not believe that Bush would consciously lie knowing he would get caught. They may believe he overemphasized the elements of his argument for war while ignoring the elements that contradicted his desire to remove Saddam.

Gabe, to clarify, even I had the same opinion as everyone else, that Iraq had WMD. But I didn't have several super-secret spy agencies, with surveillance satellites and computer networks and guys in turbans mingling with the crowds. I trusted that my government had that sort of help.

One hypothesis, and one that a cynic such as myself can subscribe to, which I have spelled out before, is this: Bush and Co. may have capitalized on Americans' fear after 9/11 to gain more power, in order to further their own ends. Part of doing that was making us believe that there was an even greater threat to our country than the hijackers who attacked on that day. He/they wanted us to believe that there was a vast al Qaeda organization that was supported by Saddam Hussein, with massive weaponsry, and that was an immediate, "clear and present danger" to us here in our home country.

Now, yall just hold on, I'm just calling it a hypothesis, ok?

Part of that hypothesis would suggest that it was to their benefit to have us thinking things were worse than they were. Thus, the uncertainty about what kinds of WMD Iraq had was relayed to the public as absolute certainty that he had tons of every kind of evil shit, mounted on rockets pointed right at the USA. You know we were told variations on that story, I linked a bunch of fictional "al Qaeda and Iraq links" news stories earlier today.

WMD was not the only thing the Administration was wrong about. The meetings between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi officials were fabricated. The threat to US national security was exaggerated -- as we saw, there is no evidence that Iraq could have done anything to us at all.

I have said, saying that you have knowledge when you don't is a kind of lie. Believing that you have knowledge on insufficient evidence is a kind of lie to yourself. Believing you have knowledge because somebody else has told you something in confidence is not a lie, but the person who told it to you -- or the person who told it to them, etc. etc., lied.

It is certainly bad faith to tell the world you have fuckin' surveillance photos proving something, and then you go out there and there is nothing there.

PtG, for one, nowher in the links you posted can you support your contention that anyone in our Administration "lied" about Atta meeting with Iraqis. The stories turned out to be wrong. That does not make them fictional. Again you mistake the difference betwen lying and being wrong. And your "hypothesis" is little more than Chomskyite hallucination. That is not surprising, since in your other posts you've made you clearly believe that the CIA is, or ought to be, omnipotent and omniscient. And Bush never said Iraq was an "imminent" threat. He specifically denied that Iraq was an imminient threat, and said that we needed to take action DESPITE the fact that Iraq was NOT an imminent threat. Please cite Bush or other senior Administration official saying "absolute certainty that he had tons of every kind of evil shit, mounted on rockets pointed right at the USA.". You are distorting the Administration's position--I don't know if it's delibrate or just the product of fuzzy thinking.

Anthony, you don't know anything about neocons. Dick Cheney is not a neocon. Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condi Rice are not neocons--I would say THEY were Bush's top advisors. To say that neocons are Likudniks is to buy into Buchanan's theory that Jews are controlling the White House. Spare me. It's nonsense. If you think a neocon is a hawkish conservative who supports Israel and is a student of Strauss, you are completely wrong. It's not your fault. The media just learned the word and they are misusing it too. It makes a nice conspiracy theory, but the members of the Cabinet are quite capable of thinking for themselves.
In any event, I concede that definite statements were made. If they were based on the evidence available at the time, there is no culpability. Until you can show that they weren't, why are we discussing it?

Gabe, the Atta/Iraq story fell apart. I didn't say it was a lie, did I?

Yeah, the CIA sure oughta know what's going on. I always trusted that they did. Turns out they didn't know anything about what was in Iraq.

Listen dude, there's more than one way to connect the dots here. That is pretty much the sum of what I'm saying. You can start from a position of trust that the Bush adminsitration is truthful, and go one way, or can start suspicious and go the other way, and the dots -- as far as we've got at this point -- fit both patterns.

Gabe, if I were giving a talk to some group, I would call these local optima on the cognitive landscape. I think you can handle the concept. Right now, given the state of information, we have a multimodal function surface, and some people on this blog (think of them as autonomous agents searching for the function minimum) are clustered around one optimum, some around another. Further, it seems to me that the cost function evaluates as well on one as on the other.

I put my money on one region of the search space, but I can see it is multimodal, and keep some dough in my pocket in case the other optimum turns out better.

All right, PtG, if your hypothesis is so reasonable, CAN YOU GIVE ONE EXAMPLE OF SUCH A THING EVER HAPPENING BEFORE?

You know, when you say that the CIA ought to know all about what's going on in Iraq, that is like saying that physicists ought to know all about how the universe is put together, or that sociologists ought to know all about how to predict human behavior.

I mean, it's ridiculous.

Funny how France and Germany thought the same things about Iraq as we.

I brought it up because of your statement.

//Let me restate it once more: France and the UN inspection teams had substantially the same opinions about Iraq's WMD that this Administration and the PREVIOUS Administration did.//

I mispoke. Your are right. And know more about the neo-cons than you think.

It is possible that in their zeal, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Pearle, Bennett and the rest of the PNAC members, along with the American Enterprise Institute members who are so hellbent on an American Empire, mislead our President.

PNAC (Project for a New American Century)
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

American Enterprise Institute
http://www.theamericanenterprise.org/index1.htm

Pass the Gas:

At Last!!

"There is more than one way to connect the dots here"

Beautiful!! I agree completely. I think is possibly the most reasonable thing I've ever seen you say here. As I've stated, possibly a MILLION times, it all comes down to what you choose to believe. I choose to give the benefit of the doubt to our leaders. (And before you say, NOOOO, I am NOT saying that you are giving Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt)
Is it possible that we were lied to up to and including pres. Bush? Yes. is it likely? I don't see a need to believe that, at this point. NOT with what we know about what kind of individual Saddam Hussein was. Someone named Nick made a great analogy yesterday-- if there's a rabid dog in the neighborhood, you don't wait until it bites someone before you do something about it. That was what we did. I've not seen enough to suspect lying, especially with so much rampant partisanship. I fully support inquiries into the prewar intelligence, as long as they are not dragged out with taxpayer money for political purposes, which, of course, they will be.

As Gabriel aptly put, why are we discussing it without enough info?

Anthony, I'm surprised at you, that Neo-con Likud thing kind of smacks of Anti-semitism. Wassupwithat?

It is possible that people mislead the President. It is very difficult to believe that they should all mislead him in the same way, given their diverging philosophies, and that they should do so wiithout he or anyone else figuring it out.

This is little better than some of my cohorts who say that terrorists come from brainwashing by an evil cult. Actually, I think it is worse. Islamist fanatics are demonstrably real. Neocon conspirators aren't.

johnnymozart:

Can someone criticize the neo-cons without the term anti-semitism coming up?

Well....no. The whole term neo-con was coined to describe the idea of a distinctly pro-Israel lobby in the conservative wing. It was popularized by buchanan, who is, in my mind, a noted Anti-Semite.

Yes, you can be anti-Likud without being semitic, but you can't deny that people who typically throw around that term have some kind of axe to grind about the jews.

xcuse me, without being anti-semitic.

From what I read of what neocons say about themselves, nowadays the term really means "Reaganite". Reaganite in ideals as ooposed to Reaganite practice...

The word means different things to different people. Long, long ago, it described a small circle of ex-Trotskyite Republicans. Buchanan uses it as a synonym for "Jewish Republican", talks a lot about "divided loyalties", and get mad when people say it's anti-Semitic--he says it is just trying to shut off debate. (You see, the International Zionist Conspiracy faked the Holocaust so they could use accusations of anti-Semitism against those who catch on to their schemes. "They really are controlling everything! Can't you SEE?" Not that Buchanan really says ALL of these terrible things but he sounds disturbingly like those who do.)
Neocons think that our foriegn policy should try to extend the rule of law and representative government, culturally understood, as far as feasible. They believe that this will make the world safest for America in the long run. I'm inclined to agree.

Gabriel:
The neocons refer to themselves as neocons.

I'm aware that neocons call themselves neocons. Did I say otherwise? I did not.

Gabriel:

No you didn't say otherwise. I just wanted to make that clear. I was probably reacting to johnnymozarts earlier statement. This probably would have been better directed to him.

Ins't of funny thatPtg 's links cocnerning Al-Qaeda-Iraq connection only deal with one of many claims.

Kind of funny how Czech intel still claims Atta met with that Iraqi intel officer.

Kind of funny the BBC is used as a source considering it's current history of lying it's leftist ass off.

Kind of funny the meeting sounds liek how Iraq used to "meet" with people.