March 28th, 2006
Yesterday, lots of leftist blogs were talking about The New York Times reporting on the “latest” memo revealing President Bush and Tony Blair’s nefairious plans to go to war in Iraq no matter what, even if it meant *gasp* tricking the world somehow.
Stamped “extremely sensitive,” the five-page memorandum, which was circulated among a handful of Mr. Blair’s most senior aides, had not been made public. Several highlights were first published in January in the book “Lawless World,” which was written by a British lawyer and international law professor, Philippe Sands. In early February, Channel 4 in London first broadcast several excerpts from the memo.
Since then, The New York Times has reviewed the five-page memo in its entirety. While the president’s sentiments about invading Iraq were known at the time, the previously unreported material offers an unfiltered view of two leaders on the brink of war, yet supremely confident.
The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was “unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.” Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.
The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.
[…]
Without much elaboration, the memo also says the president raised three possible ways of provoking a confrontation. Since they were first reported last month, neither the White House nor the British government has discussed them.
“The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours,” the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. “If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”
It also described the president as saying, “The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam’s W.M.D,” referring to weapons of mass destruction.
A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein. The memo does not indicate how Mr. Blair responded to the idea. [”Bush Was Set on Path to War, British Memo Says” (The New York Times)]
The information about the Downing Street Memos has been out for almost a year, but only now that George W. Bush’s approval ratings are in the toilet does the New York Times see fit to cover them.
[…]
In February 2002, a half-million people marched in New York City because we knew that this president was going to take us into a war based on lies. The denizens of Left Blogistan knew that this president was going to take us into a war based on lies. When the Downing Street memo first came out, the British, and anyone who bothers to read anything other than the New York Post and the New York Sun and watch anything other than Fox News, knew for certain the kind of chicanery in which Bush and Blair engaged in order to get us into this war.
And now the rest of the country should know. The question is whether they will still choose not to know, because to know is to be obligated to get involved with the political processes necessary to do something about it.[“Late isn’t always better than never” (Brilliant at Breakfast)]
So the New York Times is running a big story headlined Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says, as if it’s news. The only real news here is that they’re treating it like it’s news. As it happens, The Guardian covered the story in February, as did a whole lot of bloggers, many of whom had been covering a little thing known as The Downing Street Memos for, ahem, quite some time. Suffice it to say, the reaction to the Times‘ piece is a bit, uh, jaded in some quarters. [“Is It Really “News” If It’s Not New?” (Shakespeare’s Sister)]
O.K. So, I kind of feel the whole thing is a non-event. Really, look around. It’s the next day and no one is really talking about it. It’s kind of yesterday’s non-news already.
Do I think it’s real? Yes.
However, I think that no one’s listening — particularly to The New York Times. The right wing won’t put any credit into anything The New York Times publishes that doesn’t feed their agenda because they insist it’s a liberal-biased rag despite the fact that Judy Miller apparently was being hand fed stories for years by the White House. The left doesn’t trust the Times because of the whole Judy Miller thing. Really, the Times has lost quite a bit of credibility on both sides.
Ayway, Shakespeare’s Sister is right, this isn’t news. It’s preaching to a tired, frustrated choir. The people who need to hear it aren’t listening and don’t want to know. They can’t know because they can’t be wrong. There can’t be any truth in what those memos say, not a shred, because then they wouldn’t be able to be so self-righteous.
Tags: Iraq, Downing Street Memo, George W. Bush, Tony Blair, New York Times, Judy Miller, politics, WMD, Saddam Hussein, Conspiracy Theories
October 26th, 2005
I’ve been thinking about Donklephant’s post by Callimachus this morning called “______ Lied”. The post itself has a liberal-biased tilt, but the original column, It Wasn’t Just Miller’s Story seems to be straight reporting to me and I think it’s something that many of us die-hard anti-Iraq-War-Bill-Clinton-loving liberal try very, very hard to ignore or forget.
The truth is that the fear of Suddam Huissen’s potential to wage nuclear destruction on his neighbors and the world didn’t start in January 2001 or even after September 11, 2001.
Here are a few past headlines from The New York Times:
- “Iraq Has Network of Outside Help on Arms, Experts Say”(November 1998)
- “U.S. Says Iraq Aided Production of Chemical Weapons in Sudan”(August 1998)
- “Iraq Suspected of Secret Germ War Effort” (February 2000)
- “Signs of Iraqi Arms Buildup Bedevil U.S. Administration” (February 2000)
- “Flight Tests Show Iraq Has Resumed a Missile Program” (July 2000) [“It Wasn’t Just Miller’s Story”]
It’s important to note here that despite recent accusations and theories that Judith Miller single-handedly convinced the American public that an invasion of Iraq was not only necessary but the right thing to do, she shared a byline on only one of these articles, the rest were written by others. Also, The New York Times wasn’t the only paper making these Clinton-era claims; The Washington Post’s archives contains similar articles.
Clinton administration officials, intelligence officials, U.N. weapons inspectors, and international analysts at the time claimed that Iraq would be “capable within months — and possibly just weeks or days — of threatening its neighbors with an arsenal of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons;” it was believed that Iraq was “still hiding tons of nerve gas” and was “seeking to obtain uranium from a rogue nation or terrorist groups to complete as many as four nuclear warheads.” It was believed that Hussein spent $120 billion in oil revenue and “devoted his intelligence service to an endless game of cat and mouse to hide his suspected weapons caches from United Nations inspections.” He was reportedly “scouring the world for tools to build new weapons” and there were concerns that he was closer to building a nuclear weapon than he was in 1991.[“It Wasn’t Just Miller’s Story”]
Heck, the Clinton administration was so worried about Iraq’s growing nuclear program, that they bombed Iraq for four days in 1998 .
From 1998 through 2000, the Times editorial page warned that “without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year” and that “future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again.” Otherwise, Iraq could “restore its ability to deliver biological and chemical weapons against potential targets in the Middle East.” “The world,” it said, “cannot leave Mr. Hussein free to manufacture horrific germs and nerve gases and use them to terrorize neighboring countries.”
[…]
The Times was not alone, of course. On Jan. 29, 2001, The Post editorialized that “of all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous — or more urgent — than the situation in Iraq. Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with, or calling attention to, the almost complete unraveling of a decade’s efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam Hussein and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction. That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf,” including “intelligence photos that show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons.”
[…]
As we wage what the Times now calls “the continuing battle over the Bush administration’s justification for the war in Iraq,” we will have to grapple with the stubborn fact that the underlying rationale for the war was already in place when this administration arrived.[“It Wasn’t Just Miller’s Story”]
If the danger from Hussien and Iraq was so immenent, why did we as a nation wait so long?
If the danger from Hussein and Iraq was so real, why did we struggle to find allies to back us up?
If Hussein really is the insane dictator, willing to use chemical warfare on his own people — which we know is true — why then did he not use these weapons of mass distruction on American troops marching toward Baghdad? One argument the right likes to give is that Hussein shipped them to other countries to hide them, but I question why he would make WMD and then not use them during a time of war?
If there were WMD and real proof of them, why did the Bush administration try to discredit Joseph Wilson, a retired diplomat, when he refuted their claims of evidence that Iraq had bought uranium from Nigeria? Why would they need to if the evidence was so strong?
I have a lot of questions, but somehow I don’t think we’ll ever know the whole truth.
Tags: Judy Miller, Saddam Hussein, Bill Clinton, Iraq, George W. Bush, politics, WMD, Joe Wilson
August 5th, 2005
I’ve seen this in a couple places on the internet the last couple of days. As I haven’t seen it yet printed in any “official” sites, I don’t know how true it is (and these days it’s really hard to tell who’s telling the truth and who’s not…which I think was the GOP’s plan all along.)
Federal Whistle Blower Claims Chicago Grand Jury Indicted Bush And Others For Perjury and Obstruction Of Justice; U.S. Attorney’s Office Says ‘No Comment,’ Refusing To Confirm Or Deny Alleged Indictments
That headline comes from the Artic Beacon, which hails itself as “the last frontier of truth”. As I just stumbled on them, I can’t say one way or another if that’s true.
Although the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago is staying silent, it is well known that Fitzgerald is digging deep into an assortment of serious improprieties among many Bush administration figures based, in part, on subpoenaed testimony provided by former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
According to federal whistleblower Tom Heneghen, who recently reported on www.truthradio.com, Powell testified before the citizen grand jury that President Bush had taken the U.S. to war illegally based on lies, which is a capital crime involving treason under the U.S. Code.
“Regarding the Powell testimony, there is no comment,” said Sanborn.
However, sources close to the federal grade jury probe also allegedly told Heneghen a host of administration figures besides Bush were also indicted, including Vice-President Richard Cheney, Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, imprisoned New York Times reporter Judith Miller and former Senior Cheney advisor Mary Matalin.
Heneghen, unavailable for comment and first reported by internet reporter Tom Flocco, allegedly also told sources White House Advisor Karl Rove was indicted for perjury in a major document shredding operation cover-up and that Prime Minister Tony Blair was also indicted for obstruction of justice charges.
The article goes on to discuss a whole Watergate-type conspiracy involving bomb scares and attempts to get Fitzgerald, who is “Special Counsel to investigate the CIA- Valerie Plame case,” fired.
As much as I want this to be true, I hate to admit that I need more “reliable’ confirmation. I mean, Kenneth Star’s investigation was daily big news and so far, I haven’t heard a peep, even on NPR, my most trusted source…though lately, I’ve been wondering about them too.
Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Andrew Card, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Judy Miller, Karl Rove, PlameGate, Conspiracy Theories
