Yikes! Worldnetdaily article about Bush the Liar

[karlschneider]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34930

[FlashHarry]

1. WTF? I thought WND was a Scaife-run RW rag?

Or is that NewsMax? I forget. Is it Bizarro day, or something? :wtf:

[karlschneider]

3. It's usually a wingnut refuge. Maybe it's Sadie Hawkins day...

:D

[Booberdawg]

2. Saw that earlier. Amazing isn't it.

[E_Zapata]

4. Incredible Conclusion,

It was the height of irresponsibility to have done so in the middle of a war on al-Qaida, the real and proven threat to America. Bush diverted those troops and other resources – including intelligence assets, Arabic translators and hundreds of billions of tax dollars – from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders along the Afghan-Pakistani border. And now they've regrouped and are as threatening as ever.

That's inexcusable, and Bush supporters with any intellectual honesty and concern for their own families' safety should be mad as hell about it – and that's coming from someone who voted for Bush.


***This journalist should be sent a Bush Lied - People Died bumper sticker.

[scarletwoman]

5. The war between the paleocons and the neocons heats up....

"Bring 'em on!" :evilgrin:

sw

[Jeff in Cincinnati]

6. Great Ceasar's Ghost!

Did I wake up in some parallel universe where the World Net Daily attacks the Bush Administration? This is enormously good news to see movement conservatives taking up sides and beating each other's brains out.

I have an extra baseball bat in the garage, if any of them would like to borrow it!

[RamboLiberal]

7. Not a surprise from this author

You ought to read his book "Crude Politics" - he says much of what "Forbidden Truth" did about Afghanistan being about oil as well. And he makes AWOL look like a blabbering idiot in the book.

[davidinalameda]

8. you gotta love it

the conservatives are turning on Bushie

[dutchdemocrat]

9. No way is Sperry a conservative

He is not a conservative. Worldnetdaily has writers from the left and the right. It is a pretty interesting publication really.

I wonder if this fodder is impeachment material?

[dutchdemocrat]

10. Here are his sources for the article if anyone is interested.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/docs/nie-iraq-wmd.html

•Although we assess that Saddam does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them. Most agencies assess that Baghdad started reconstituting its nuclear program about the time that UNSCOM inspectors departed—December 1998.

Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qa'ida—with worldwide reach and extensive terrorist infrastructure, and already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States—could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct.

The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to { p.5 } acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment. Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, INR is unwilling to speculate that such an effort began soon after the departure of UN inspectors or to project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening. As a result, INR is unable to predict when Iraq could acquire a nuclear device or weapon.

In INR’s view Iraq’s efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose. INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets. The very large quantities being sought, the way the tubes were tested by the Iraqis, and the atypical lack of attention to operational security in the procurement efforts are among the factors, in addition to the DOE assessment, that lead INR to conclude that the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq’s nuclear weapon program.

Some of the specialized but dual-use items being sought are, by all indications, bound for Iraq’s missile program. Other cases are ambiguous, such as that of a planned magnet-production line whose suitability for centrifuge operations remains unknown. Some efforts involve non-controlled industrial material and equipment—including a variety of machine tools—and are troubling because they would help establish the infrastructure for a renewed nuclear program. But such efforts (which began well before the inspectors departed) are not clearly linked to a nuclear end-use. Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR’s assessment, highly dubious.
-------------------

and an "off the record" press briefing from July 18, 2003 (why the whitehouse is putting "off the record" material on their website is beyond me...

They only fed the reporters 25 pages and it appears that Sperry got a hold of the full report.


Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/nationalsecurity/documents/ nie_iraq_wmd.pdf. Page numbers of the NIE (pp.24, 84) were disclosed at the White House ‘background’ (off-the-record) press briefing on July 18 2003, 1:10-2:24 p.m. EDT (copies: FAS, DoS, DoS).

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/print/20030718-8.html

[dutchdemocrat]

11. Here is an excellent explanation

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/wot/iraq/politicizedintelligence.html

The Bush administration intentionally “skewed intelligence” so that it would support the case for war.
a Summary.

i According to numerous credible sources, the hawks in the Bush administration “intentionally skewed” intelligence to support their case for war, even instructing scientists who disagreed with the administration’s assertions to keep their dissenting views away from public discourse.



b Evidence.

i The “Waldorf Transcripts”

(A) Summary.

(1) On May 31, 2003 the Guardian newspaper of London published a summary of a leaked transcript of an early February 2003 discussion between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in which the two officials expressed doubt over the Bush administration’s claims. Powell at one point even expressed concern over the possibility that their statements might later “explode in their faces.” After the transcript was leaked, the Foreign Office denied that the reported meeting had taken place.

(B) Who was involved.

(1) U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

(2) British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

(C) Where the discussion took place.

(1) The Waldorf hotel in New York.

(D) When the discussion took place.

(1) “hortly before a crucial UN security council session on February 5.”

(2) “ few days after Downing Street presented Mr. Powell with a separate dossier on Iraq's banned weapons.” The dossier was released on Monday, February 3.

(E) Main points of the transcripts.

(1) The British “foreign secretary reportedly expressed concern that claims being made by Mr. Blair and President Bush could not be proved.”

(2) “Much of the intelligence were assumptions and assessments not supported by hard facts or other sources.”

(3) Powell had said during the discussion that he had come away from the meetings with U.S. intelligence officials, “ ‘apprehensive’ about what he called, at best, circumstantial evidence highly tilted in favor of assessments drawn from them, rather than any actual raw intelligence.”

(4) “Mr. Powell told the foreign secretary he hoped the facts, when they came out, would not ‘explode in their faces’.”

(F) Who leaked the transcripts.

(1) “iplomats who supported the war against Iraq even when the evidence about Saddam Hussein's program of weapons of mass destruction was fuzzy, and who now believe they were lied to.”

(2) “People circulating the transcripts call themselves ‘allied sources supportive of US war aims in Iraq at the time’.”

(G) Significance.

(1) “Jack Straw and his US counterpart, Colin Powell, privately expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons program at the very time they were publicly trumpeting it to get UN support for a war on Iraq.”



ii September 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency report.

(A) Summary.

(1) In September 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency issued an 80-plus-page classified report titled, “Iraq: Key Weapons Facilities -- An Operational Support Study”, concluding that there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the claim that Iraq had an ongoing chemical weapons program or that Iraq still had biological weapons capabilities.

(B) Excerpts from the summary of the document.

(1) “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. . .”

(2) Iraq is assessed to possess biological agent stockpiles that may be weaponized and ready for use. The size of those stockpiles is uncertain and is subject to debate. The nature and condition of those stockpiles also are unknown.

(3) “lthough we lack any direct information, Iraq probably possesses chemical munitions, possibly including artillery shells, aerial bombs and ballistic missile warheads.

(4) The summary reported that Iraq “probably possesses bulk chemical stockpiles, primarily containing precursors, but that also could consist of some mustard agent and VX.”

(5) It stated that Iraq's ability to develop nerve agents like VX gas was “constrained by its stockpile of key chemical precursors and the destruction of all known CW production facilities during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and during subsequent UN inspections.”

(C) Confirmation.

(1) Fox News reported: “Two Pentagon officials who had read the summary confirmed Friday that it said DIA had no hard evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons.”

(D) Statements.

(1) Unnamed defense official interviewed by Reuters on May 6, 2003.

(a) “What this report is saying is that there's not enough reliable information to move things into the category of things we know (about WMDs in Iraq). The way it's briefed is in the category of ‘hey we think this is going on’ (but we don't have absolute proof).”

(2) Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency

(a) Jacoby said the report concluded that the agency “could not specifically pin down individual facilities operating as part of the weapons of mass destruction program, specifically the chemical warfare portion”.

(b) “What we're saying is that as of 2002 in September, we could not reliably pin down, for somebody who was doing contingency planning, specific facilities, locations or production that was underway at a specific location at that point in time.”

(E) Excerpts from media reports.

(1) Washington Post.

(a) “ccording to senior intelligence officials, intelligence agencies had no direct evidence such as photographs or stolen Iraqi documents to support a firm conclusion about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. They said the case was circumstantial, largely because U.N. weapons inspectors had left Iraq in 1998, shutting off the last bit of direct knowledge available to the United States.”

(F) Response from Bush administration

(1) Michael Anton, a spokesman with the White House's National Security Council.

(a) “The entire report paints a different picture than the selective quotes would lead you to believe. The entire report is consistent with the president was saying at the time.”

[dutchdemocrat]

12. Dupe

Dupe