Halabja Remembered

We must never forget what Saddam did. We must help the Kurds!

The End of the Iraq War

Today marks the end of the seven year conflict in Iraq. When the war began in March 2003 it swiftly toppled the tyrannical dictatorship of Saddam Hussein then simmered for three years until the year of near-civil war. Today, after the success of the Surge and countless sacrifices by the US, Allied, and Iraqi militaries, Iraq is free. The last combat troops of our military have left via Kuwait:

"It's something I'm going to be proud of for the rest of my life — the fact that I came in on the initial push and now I'm leaving with the last of the combat units," [Spc. Luke Dill] said.

Thank goodness

This is certainly a proud moment and thankfully the war ended on our terms, not those of al Qaeda or the Ba'athists. Thanks must go out to our brave men and women who gave so much.


Cross-posted World Threats.

Don't forget to comment and to bookmark our site!

Consider advertising on our site!

Should US Combat Troops be pulled out of Iraq?

Should US Combat Troops be pulled out of Iraq?

As of this moment: 20,000 additional United States Soldiers will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of this month, basically ending all US Combat Troop operations in the war-torn Nation that's still without a functioning coalition government, even though their National Election was held several months ago. This policy is similar to President Nixon's approach to South Vietnam, which you might remember was a failure.

NeoConservatives have mostly opposed the launch of Operation New Dawn for quite some time, but with increasing violence, a potential resurgence of the al_Qaeda, a stalled government, and Iraqi Lt. General Babaker Zebari calling for US Troops to remain in the Nation until perhaps 2020, the calls to continue to defend the Iraqi people are no longer NeoConservative pleas, but a crucially important realism that will hopefully be realized in time.

Leaving Iraq would be suicide at this point. We have definitely Won the War, but now we need to make sure that our Victory will be the ultimate success for centuries to come. We freed the Iraqi's and we secured their Nation, but such as the United States struggled with threats after our arrival in world affairs in 1776, so is Iraq in 2010. The only difference is that the struggling new Nation has a friend who can help; and who must help.

We cannot leave Iraq.

What say you?





Consider advertising on our site!

Iraq Assumes National Combat Responsibilities

This is an immensely proud day for both the United States and Iraq and the culmination of all of the struggles of our military. Today marked the day that all combat duties were transferred from the United States to the Iraqi Security Forces after seven years of war.

"Today is an extremely important day as we continue to progress toward turning over full responsibility to the Iraqi security forces," General Raymond Odierno, top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told reporters after a departure ceremony for the last U.S. combat brigade.

This is a day which proves wrong all claims that Iraq was ungovernable, that the people there wanted to kill all of our troops, that democracy cannot succeed, that the military was too infested by terrorists, that no one wanted to fight for the new Iraqi government, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm glad that the doubters were wrong, to eat their humble pie while a new democracy that can sustain and defend itself rises from the Middle East.

Cross-posted at World Threats.

Don't forget to comment and to bookmark our site!

Consider advertising on our site!

The Hammer on Obama's Iraq Speech

 

Don't forget to comment and to bookmark our site!

Consider advertising on our site!

Obama Takes Credit for Iraq War Win

President Obama has taken responsibility for the Iraq War-- now that it's over. Now it's a great success-- after George Bush and David Petraeus and the backs of the American military won it. Glad to see that Obama stepped in after the fighting and made everything better-- after his proposals while in the Senate and on the campaign trail would have left part of the country in the stead of al Qaeda and a larger, oil-riddled chunk for Iran.

House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio issued a statement praising Obama "for listening to our commanders in the field" but added, "This is no time to celebrate." He warned that the stalled formation of a new government in Baghdad and a recent attack on Shiite pilgrims prove how vulnerable Iraq remains.

Obama defended his and others' opposition to the war, saying "there are patriots who supported going to war and patriots who opposed it."

Following the speech, Obama left to speak at a Democratic National Committee fund-raising event where 200 guests were expected to donate a combined $500,000 .

Don't forget to comment and to bookmark our site!

Consider advertising on our site!

Afghanistan: This is Our War.

Here's an honest question for all Americans: Who owns the War in Afghanistan? Karzai? Obama? Cameron? NATO? The UN? Bush? To me, it's None of the above. This is not Karzai's War, this is Our War; America's War. That started when 17 sex crazed Islamists murdered 3,000 innocent humans on September eleventh, 2001.

Our War was launched to eliminate the Islamists who planned it, the Terrorist's who supported it, and the Fundamentalists who harboured It. Uplifting Afghanistan via Nation Building is just one aspect of our mission to oppose our enemies on the ground, but we should never be confused as to what our primary objective is:

Victory in Afghanistan.

Which is why I cringed this afternoon when the AP published this headline: Karzai reaffirms 2014 goal for Afghan-led security. Goodness! It feels like Afghanistan has turned into Iraq because Iraq was more about removing Saddam than Security, while Afghanistan has, and is, to my knowledge, been about American Security, not Afghan control, which inadvertently places a timeline on our Troops.

Freeing Afghanistan was Awesome.

Women owning Businesses is superb.

Elections being held is Impressive.

However, America winning the War, is what really matters. This is not Afghanistan's War, it's Ours. And I hope we never forget that.

Consider advertising on our site!

Halabja: Not to Be Forgotten

The world ended for many on March 16, 1988.

By the end of the day, over five thousand civilians lie dead or dying, and over ten thousand more are crippled, blind, or cannot breathe. The worst chemical weapons attack since the First World War has taken its toll on this mountainous border town.

None could imagine that just fifteen years and three days later, paratroopers would be falling from the skies; shaking hands and giving food and water, instead of chemical shells. Over the next three weeks, the people of Halabja, and all of the world watched as one of the worst regimes in human history fell to the might of will. Within months, students from Tehran University demanded to know why their country is not liberated.

Not more than one and a half years earlier, forces of the Northern Alliance, formerly led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, rolled their rusty T-55 tanks down the thoroughfares of Kabul and into the celebrating masses of ordinary folk.

Just four and a half years after the fall of the capital of Afghanistan to the mujahadeen, the people of Beirut staged illegal demonstrations in order to secure free expression; that Lebanon is the property of Lebanon’s people, and of no foreigners. Just last year they had free elections.

What do all of these events have in common? They all share the thread of people’s yearning to be free. With the help of outsiders of thousands of miles away, speaking in foreign tongues and worshipping at different houses, this was accomplished. But how?

For one of the first times in Middle Eastern history, it is becoming accepted to raise one’s voice, and to say what one wants to say, and not what one’s forced to say. In Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon, democracy has sprung forth with tangible force. In Jordan, Egypt, and Kuwait, people are experiencing their first inkling of a constitutionalist society. Even in Iran, Libya, and Saudi Arabia are people starting to shake off the ashes of fascism and learning that they can be heard.

In 1938, the Third Reich was staring hungrily at the central European democracy of Czechoslovakia, while outside powers debated what to do. All knew that National Socialist Germany had remilitarized the Rhineland, seized the Saar, and had just invaded Austria under “peaceful” guises. The government of Czechoslovakia, under Eduard Benes, saw the lies of the Nazi regime and broadcast them for the Western democracies to hear. This would not just end in the Sudetenland, as Hitler had promised, but also spread to Prague, Memel, Warsaw, Amsterdam, and Paris. No one listened to the wise man, for no true prophet is taken at their word.

The democracies balked and gave into the “reasonable” demands of Germany. Not only this, but they had the supreme lack of foresight to declare “peace in our time.”

But Benes was right. Within six months, all of Czechia was in the hands of the Nazis, and just six months after that, the Wermacht was crossing the border into Poland. Just eight months after that, the Maginot line was nothing more than a heap of concrete and steel.

Today, the cries of appeasement and Chamberlainism can be heard loudly today, echoed from the West; but unfortunately, as in 1938, those that would benefit from such a policy are feeding the fire of evil and hegemony. Today, those nations that were given up to Hitler, then conquered by Stalin have screamed again, this time to let us know what they went through. These nations, like the Czech Republic, Holland, and Poland, had no second thoughts providing their best support to the anti-fascist movement against dictatorship in the Middle East, led by the United States. Now, women can go outside their house in Kandahar without a veil on, and people can speak their mind in Mosul, without their wife and daughter being raped.

This dream is on the precipice, though. It has marginally succeeded in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon, and is spreading like the Holy Word to the rest of the Middle East. If this is pressed by those that have known despotism and wish to see it ended throughout mankind, possibly it could succeed.

There will be obstacles. Ba’athists continue to murder children with the help of their al Qaeda allies. Ba’athism is still in control in Syria, running a despotism that is a hotbed of terror. The Islamic Revolution still reigns in Tehran, where it is seeking man’s worst weapons for man’s worst reasons while denying man’s worst crime. In Saudi Arabia, freedom is appearing too slow and in Azerbaijan; elections do not seem as fair as they should be.

Still, despite all of these hurdles, inaction would be far worse than anything that the partners of freedom could do. Halabja would be seen as a glorious act, September 11^th, 2001, will be seen as a relatively low-casualty day, and the people of the world will think Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti a mild man compared to those that replaced him. To turn away now, at the turning point, would be the same as the Munich agreement of 1938. It will fill our hearts with hope and our brains with images of a false peace. This time, when the troops cross the Polish border, they will not be riding on Panzer IIs, they will be strapped with weapons of mass destruction, which will at first be used for its name’s sake, and then will be used as blackmail for mass injustice.

Then the world would end for everyone else.

Consider advertising on our site!
Also, if you need to search anything on Google, please use the bar below:

Saddam Restarted Nuclear Program

I know that we've been told for years now that Saddam Hussein only had over a ton of uranium, some partially enriched, for non-nuclear weapons purposes. And despite having chemical weapons shells and ballistic missiles, neither counted as WMD. This, of course, because George Bush had to have lied about it, and Saddam couldn't have actually have been the guilty one.

And now this.

At the time of the 1990 offer, Iraq was embarked in a crash program to develop nuclear weapons in the face of a threatened U.S.-led attack over its occupation of Kuwait. By that date, Iraqi scientists had acquired a limited amount of weapons-grade enriched uranium but lacked several key components, including a workable design for a small nuclear warhead.

So Saddam attempted to build a nuclear weapon to threaten our forces before the Gulf War. Huh. And this comes from a former UN weapons inspector and nuclear weapons expert. This must somehow be George Bush's fault.

Bookmark our site!

Consider advertising on our site!

Obama's New Plan for Iraq: Release the Terrorists and Hope that They Don't Go on a Killing Spree

First, let me preface this with a statement. I understand the importance in counter-insurgency warfare to appear to be both merciful and tough. I understand that sometimes you have to release people who may have attacked you and re-integrate them back into a peaceful, productive society.

But still, everyone has their limits.

And today, when savage terrorists massacred at least 70 Iraqis, 300 veteran terrorists are set to be released. So are these simply poor farmers who were arrested wrongly? No. Were they people who just launched a rocket or placed a roadside bomb because they needed to feed their family? Probably not.

Instead, they are members of the Iranian-funded Asaib al Haq, who not only have launched attacks on Allied and Iraqi forces, but who led uprisings last year. Fortunately their group was almost annihilated by Maliki's swift offensives.

So all's well with the decision? Not exactly:

"The last thing the Iraqis need right now is for the wholesale release of members of this group just when the Iraqi security forces are trying to learn to walk," one official told The Long War Journal. "I see no indication the Asaib al Haq [League of the Righteous] is sincere about reconciliation; US troops are still being attacked by these Iranian surrogates."

Also released are members of the Iranian Qods Force, who have been coordinating attacks in Iraq for years. For example, Mahmoud Farhadi is one of the three leaders of the Qods Force in Iraq. ... And he's being released.

And this is in conjunction with another decision made by the White House to not bomb terrorists when they are in the Air Force's sights. Great.

Remember to bookmark our site!
Consider advertising on our site!

Who's Lying About Iraq?

December 2005

Who Is Lying About Iraq?

Norman Podhoretz

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.

The main “lie” that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD as they have invariably come to be called. From this followed the subsidiary “lie” that Iraq under Saddam’s regime posed a two-edged mortal threat. On the one hand, we were informed, there was a distinct (or even “imminent”) possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us and/or our allies; and on the other hand, there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked.

This entire scenario of purported deceit has been given a new lease on life by the indictment in late October of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby stands accused of making false statements to the FBI and of committing perjury in testifying before a grand jury that had been convened to find out who in the Bush administration had “outed” Valerie Plame, a CIA agent married to the retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV. The supposed purpose of leaking this classified information to the press was to retaliate against Wilson for having “debunked” (in his words) “the lies that led to war.”

Now, as it happens, Libby was not charged with having outed Plame but only with having lied about when and from whom he first learned that she worked for the CIA. Moreover, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor who brought the indictment against him, made a point of emphasizing that

[t]his indictment is not about the war. This indictment is not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

This is simply an indictment that says, in a national-security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer’s identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person—a person, Mr. Libby—lied or not.

No matter. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, spoke for a host of other opponents of the war in insisting that

[t]his case is bigger than the leak of classified information. It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the President.

Yet even stipulating—which I do only for the sake of argument—that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.

How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was “a slam dunk.” This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Tenet had the backing of all fifteen agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with “high confidence” was that

Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.

The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel, and—yes—France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix—who headed the UN team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past—lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:

The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.

Blix now claims that he was only being “cautious” here, but if, as he now also adds, the Bush administration “misled itself” in interpreting the evidence before it, he at the very least lent it a helping hand.

So, once again, did the British, the French, and the Germans, all of whom signed on in advance to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s reading of the satellite photos he presented to the UN in the period leading up to the invasion. Powell himself and his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, now feel that this speech was the low point of his tenure as Secretary of State. But Wilkerson (in the process of a vicious attack on the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of Defense for getting us into Iraq) is forced to acknowledge that the Bush administration did not lack for company in interpreting the available evidence as it did:

I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits, and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the UN on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can’t. I’ve wrestled with it. [But] when you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical-weapons ASP—Ammunition Supply Point—with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they’re there, you have to conclude that it’s a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the UN inspectors wheeling in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP, and everything is changed, everything is clean. . . . But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [Tenet’s deputy] was convinced, that what we were presented [for Powell’s UN speech] was accurate.

Going on to shoot down a widespread impression, Wilkerson informs us that even the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was convinced:

People say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios.

In explaining its dissent on Iraq’s nuclear program, the INR had, as stated in the NIE of 2002, expressed doubt about

Iraq’s efforts to acquire aluminum tubes [which are] central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program. . . . INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors . . . in Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program.

But, according to Wilkerson,

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?

In short, and whether or not it included the secret heart of Hans Blix, “the consensus of the intelligence community,” as Wilkerson puts it, “was overwhelming” in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam definitely had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and that he was also in all probability well on the way to rebuilding the nuclear capability that the Israelis had damaged by bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981.

Additional confirmation of this latter point comes from Kenneth Pollack, who served in the National Security Council under Clinton. “In the late spring of 2002,” Pollack has written,

I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes).

No wonder, then, that another conclusion the NIE of 2002 reached with “high confidence” was that

Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material.¹

But the consensus on which Bush relied was not born in his own administration. In fact, it was first fully formed in the Clinton administration. Here is Clinton himself, speaking in 1998:

If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction program.

Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:

Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.

Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam:

He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.

Finally, Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, was so sure Saddam had stockpiles of WMD that he remained “absolutely convinced” of it even after our failure to find them in the wake of the invasion in March 2003.

Nor did leading Democrats in Congress entertain any doubts on this score. A few months after Clinton and his people made the statements I have just quoted, a group of Democratic Senators, including such liberals as Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urged the President

to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.

Nancy Pelosi, the future leader of the Democrats in the House, and then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added her voice to the chorus:

Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.

This Democratic drumbeat continued and even intensified when Bush succeeded Clinton in 2001, and it featured many who would later pretend to have been deceived by the Bush White House. In a letter to the new President, a number of Senators led by Bob Graham declared:

There is no doubt that . . . Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical, and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf war status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.

Senator Carl Levin also reaffirmed for Bush’s benefit what he had told Clinton some years earlier:

Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed, speaking in October 2002:

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed as well:

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. . . . We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.

Even more striking were the sentiments of Bush’s opponents in his two campaigns for the presidency. Thus Al Gore in September 2002:

We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.

And here is Gore again, in that same year:

Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

Now to John Kerry, also speaking in 2002:

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force—if necessary—to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.

Perhaps most startling of all, given the rhetoric that they would later employ against Bush after the invasion of Iraq, are statements made by Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, also in 2002:

Kennedy: We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.

Byrd: The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical- and biological-warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons.²

Liberal politicians like these were seconded by the mainstream media, in whose columns a very different tune would later be sung. For example, throughout the last two years of the Clinton administration, editorials in the New York Times repeatedly insisted that

without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year [and] future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again.

The Times was also skeptical of negotiations, pointing out that it was

hard to negotiate with a tyrant who has no intention of honoring his commitments and who sees nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as his country’s salvation.

So, too, the Washington Post, which greeted the inauguration of George W. Bush in January 2001 with the admonition that

[o]f 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 [where] intelligence photos . . . show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons.³

All this should surely suffice to prove far beyond any even unreasonable doubt that Bush was telling what he believed to be the truth about Saddam’s stockpile of WMD. It also disposes of the fallback charge that Bush lied by exaggerating or hyping the intelligence presented to him. Why on earth would he have done so when the intelligence itself was so compelling that it convinced everyone who had direct access to it, and when hardly anyone in the world believed that Saddam had, as he claimed, complied with the sixteen resolutions of the Security Council demanding that he get rid of his weapons of mass destruction?

Another fallback charge is that Bush, operating mainly through Cheney, somehow forced the CIA into telling him what he wanted to hear. Yet in its report of 2004, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, while criticizing the CIA for relying on what in hindsight looked like weak or faulty intelligence, stated that it

did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities.

The March 2005 report of the equally bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission, which investigated intelligence failures on Iraq, reached the same conclusion, finding

no evidence of political pressure to influence the intelligence community’s pre-war assessments of Iraq’s weapons programs. . . . [A]nalysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments.

Still, even many who believed that Saddam did possess WMD, and was ruthless enough to use them, accused Bush of telling a different sort of lie by characterizing the risk as “imminent.” But this, too, is false: Bush consistently rejected imminence as a justification for war.⁴ Thus, in the State of the Union address he delivered only three months after 9/11, Bush declared that he would “not wait on events while dangers gather” and that he would “not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer.” Then, in a speech at West Point six months later, he reiterated the same point: “If we wait for threats to materialize, we will have waited too long.” And as if that were not clear enough, he went out of his way in his State of the Union address in 2003 (that is, three months before the invasion), to bring up the word “imminent” itself precisely in order to repudiate it:

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

What of the related charge that it was still another “lie” to suggest, as Bush and his people did, that a connection could be traced between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorists who had attacked us on 9/11? This charge was also rejected by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Contrary to how its findings were summarized in the mainstream media, the committee’s report explicitly concluded that al Qaeda did in fact have a cooperative, if informal, relationship with Iraqi agents working under Saddam. The report of the bipartisan 9/11 commission came to the same conclusion, as did a comparably independent British investigation conducted by Lord Butler, which pointed to “meetings . . . between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al-Qaeda operatives.”⁵

Which brings us to Joseph C. Wilson, IV and what to my mind wins the palm for the most disgraceful instance of all.

The story begins with the notorious sixteen words inserted—after, be it noted, much vetting by the CIA and the State Department—into Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

This is the “lie” Wilson bragged of having “debunked” after being sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to check out the intelligence it had received to that effect. Wilson would later angrily deny that his wife had recommended him for this mission, and would do his best to spread the impression that choosing him had been the Vice President’s idea. But Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, through whom Wilson first planted this impression, was eventually forced to admit that “Cheney apparently didn’t know that Wilson had been dispatched.” (By the time Kristof grudgingly issued this retraction, Wilson himself, in characteristically shameless fashion, was denying that he had ever “said the Vice President sent me or ordered me sent.”) And as for his wife’s supposed non-role in his mission, here is what Valerie Plame Wilson wrote in a memo to her boss at the CIA:

My husband has good relations with the PM [the prime minister of Niger] and the former minister of mines . . . , both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.

More than a year after his return, with the help of Kristof, and also Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, and then through an op-ed piece in the Times under his own name, Wilson succeeded, probably beyond his wildest dreams, in setting off a political firestorm.

In response, the White House, no doubt hoping to prevent his allegation about the sixteen words from becoming a proxy for the charge that (in Wilson’s latest iteration of it) “lies and disinformation [were] used to justify the invasion of Iraq,” eventually acknowledged that the President’s statement “did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address.” As might have been expected, however, this panicky response served to make things worse rather than better. And yet it was totally unnecessary—for the maddeningly simple reason that every single one of the sixteen words at issue was true.

That is, British intelligence had assured the CIA that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country of Niger. Furthermore—and notwithstanding the endlessly repeated assertion that this assurance has now been discredited—Britain’s independent Butler commission concluded that it was “well-founded.” The relevant passage is worth quoting at length:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium, and the British government did not claim this.

As if that were not enough to settle the matter, Wilson himself, far from challenging the British report when he was “debriefed” on his return from Niger (although challenging it is what he now never stops doing⁶), actually strengthened the CIA’s belief in its accuracy. From the Senate Intelligence Committee report:

He [the CIA reports officer] said he judged that the most important fact in the report [by Wilson] was that Niger officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Niger prime minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium.

And again:

The report on [Wilson’s] trip to Niger . . . did not change any analysts’ assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original CIA reports on the uranium deal.

This passage goes on to note that the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research—which (as we have already seen) did not believe that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons—found support in Wilson’s report for its “assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.” But if so, this, as the Butler report quoted above points out, would not mean that Iraq had not tried to buy it—which was the only claim made by British intelligence and then by Bush in the famous sixteen words.

The liar here, then, was not Bush but Wilson. And Wilson also lied when he told the Washington Post that he had unmasked as forgeries certain documents given to American intelligence (by whom it is not yet clear) that supposedly contained additional evidence of Saddam’s efforts to buy uranium from Niger. The documents did indeed turn out to be forgeries; but, according to the Butler report,

[t]he forged documents were not available to the British government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine [that assessment].⁷

More damning yet to Wilson, the Senate Intelligence Committee discovered that he had never laid eyes on the documents in question:

[Wilson] also told committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article . . . which said, “among the envoy’s conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because ‘the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.’” Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the “dates were wrong and the names were wrong” when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.

To top all this off, just as Cheney had nothing to do with the choice of Wilson for the mission to Niger, neither was it true that, as Wilson “confirmed” for a credulous New Republic reporter, “the CIA circulated [his] report to the Vice President’s office,” thereby supposedly proving that Cheney and his staff “knew the Niger story was a flatout lie.” Yet—the mind reels—if Cheney had actually been briefed on Wilson’s oral report to the CIA (which he was not), he would, like the CIA itself, have been more inclined to believe that Saddam had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.

So much for the author of the best-selling and much acclaimed book whose title alone—The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity—has set a new record for chutzpah.

But there is worse. In his press conference on the indictment against Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald insisted that lying to federal investigators is a serious crime both because it is itself against the law and because, by sending them on endless wild-goose chases, it constitutes the even more serious crime of obstruction of justice. By those standards, Wilson—who has repeatedly made false statements about every aspect of his mission to Niger, including whose idea it was to send him and what he told the CIA upon his return; who was then shown up by the Senate Intelligence Committee as having lied about the forged documents; and whose mendacity has sent the whole country into a wild-goose chase after allegations that, the more they are refuted, the more they keep being repeated—is himself an excellent candidate for criminal prosecution.

And so long as we are hunting for liars in this area, let me suggest that we begin with the Democrats now proclaiming that they were duped, and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq—the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy—have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation, and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise and to brand as an ignominious defeat what is proving itself more and more every day to be a victory of American arms and a vindication of American ideals.

—November 7, 2005

NORMAN PODHORETZ is the editor-at-large of COMMENTARY and the author of ten books. The most recent, The Norman Podhoretz Reader, edited by Thomas L. Jeffers, appeared in 2004. His essays on the Bush Doctrine and Iraq, including “World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win” (September 2004) and “The War Against World War IV” (February 2005), can be found by clicking here.

1 Hard as it is to believe, let alone to reconcile with his general position, Joseph C. Wilson, IV, in a speech he delivered three months after the invasion at the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, offhandedly made the following remark: “I remain of the view that we will find biological and chemical weapons and we may well find something that indicates that Saddam’s regime maintained an interest in nuclear weapons.”

2 Fuller versions of these and similar statements can be found at http://www.theconversationcafe.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-3134.htmland. Another source is http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/demsonwmds.php.

3 These and numerous other such quotations were assembled by Robert Kagan in a piece published in the Washington Post on October 25, 2005.

4 Whereas both John Edwards, later to become John Kerry’s running mate in 2004, and Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, actually did use the word in describing the threat posed by Saddam.

5 In early November, the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who last year gave their unanimous assent to its report, were suddenly mounting a last-ditch effort to take it back on this issue (and others). But to judge from the material they had already begun leaking by November 7, when this article was going to press, the newest “Bush lied” case is as empty and dishonest as the one they themselves previously rejected.

6 Here is how he put it in a piece in the Los Angeles Times written in late October of this year to celebrate the indictment of Libby: “I knew that the statement in Bush’s speech . . . was not true. I knew it was false from my own investigative trip to Africa. . . . And I knew that the White House knew it.”

7 More extensive citations of the relevant passages from the Butler report can be found in postings by Daniel McKivergan at www.worldwidestandard.com. I have also drawn throughout on materials cited by the invaluable Stephen F. Hayes in the Weekly Standard.

Consider advertising on our site!

Also, if you need to search anything on Google, please use the bar below:

Happy Liberation Day!

Today being April 9th, I'd like to please wish all of our readers a happy Liberation Day. April 9, 2003 was the day of the fall of Saddam Hussein's national socialist dictatorship in Iraq and the beginning of the democracy we see there today.

His statue fell and the seeds of liberty began to sprout.

Thank you President Bush, PM Blair, PM Aznar, and all of our brave men and women in uniform!

Consider advertising on our site!
Also, if you need to search anything on Google, please use the bar below:

The Progress of Kurdistan

From Halabja to freedom to prosperity.

Halabja Remembered

We must never forget what Saddam did. We must help the Kurds!

Kurds Say Thank You, America

Always Remember Halabja

Today is the anniversary of one of the worst war crimes in human history. Twenty-one years ago today the forces of Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction to annihilate over five thousand civilians in the Kurdish city of Halabja.

This was part of the genocidal Anfal Campaign, named after a Surah in the Koran. This was Saddam's final solution to his Kurdish problem.

We must never forget. This is why we are at war. This is why we must win. This is why we will win.

Saddam's Worst Crime

Never forget.

Word

Some terrorist douchebags in Iraq thought they could fire mortars at our troops. Well, they got differently.




Consider advertising on our site!
Also, if you need to search anything on Google, please use the bar below:

Blood on Obama's Hands

Tonight, the President will lean back in a chair in the Oval Office and think of the happenings of the day, ways to push the country forward, ways to push other countries back. In eighteen months, the President will lean back in that very chair with the blood of civilians drenching his hands; by that time, he will be responsible for the deaths of countless Iraqis.

So tonight he will make a speech here and make a speech there. He will tout his pullout strategy in Iraq, he will tell you all is well. He will say that he is saving American lives and affirming American interests. But he will not say that he is dooming thousands of Iraqis to poverty and sickness, death and destruction. No, President Obama will lean to you and smile, and say he is doing what's best for our country.

I suppose defeat and a timetable is what's best.

In eighteen months, President Obama will pull out the bulk of our armed forces in Iraq, regardless of word on the ground or victory's flame. The only way to make him change his mind are the votes of the people, the American people. For you see, they are always outcries of "No Blood for Oil," but rarely cries of "No Blood for Votes." The President will pull out our troops because it is politically convenient, because he won so many votes by saying he will end the "occupation." But I say to you mister President, no blood for votes.

The reason for extra bloodshed is simple common sense. Picture yourself as a terrorist in Iraq for a moment. It is seventeen months from now and you have a bomb and you intend to use it. But there's just one problem: extra security, extra awareness. So you have to plan when there will be less security, less troops, more chance of success. So you plan and you plot when the best time is to strike. But let me make it very simple; if you wait just a few days, or a few weeks, you will not have to contend with the United States' army. You know this because you have read the fliers and heard the news that in just a little while, the army will be gone. You will know when to strike; you will know where to strike; you will have the timetable to thank.

And there is the rub. The death of civilians, the death of innocents, the death of victory in Iraq. No thank you, Mr. President, I will not believe you when you say this is for the best. I can only say to you, no blood for votes.