Oh, hell, I knew all that before the war. Can we indict yet?

Lying to the American People for their own good is Patriotic.

You don't hate Patriotism, do ya Kevin?

Even Clinton thought there were biological, chemical and nuclear WMD there. It is Clinton's fault.

So, we went to war under the full authority of the U.S. government to build an empire for Dick Cheney!

If anyone wants to find the Cheney analogue in American history, look a John Fremont of California, the man who single handedly started the Civil War.

Everybody thought Saddam had WMD.
Posted by: American Hawk on March 13, 2007 at 4:23 PM | PERMALINK

I didn't. A lot of others here also did not. I thought it was possible; so I waited to hear Powell make his case. That presentation was insultingly bad.

It's the fault of the CIA for not figuring it out, . . .

Clinton didn't invade Iraq. Bush did. Bush should have fired Tenet. Not give him a Medal of Freedom.

You gotta hold Bush responsible. Bush was CiC, and had been for 3 years before the invasion. Giving Bush a free pass betrays your obvious partisan bias. Anyone would be absolutely correct to dismiss you as a wackjob.

. . . and Saddam for pretending he did have WMD.

I don't recall such pretense. I recall fiery rhetoric. I also recall him voluntarily destroying ballistic missiles on the eve of the invasion. I also recall him letting inspectors in prior to the invasion. Those are the moves of someone desperately trying to avoid getting invaded. Not the moves of someone "pretending they have WMD".

Everybody thought Saddam had WMD. It's the fault of the CIA for not figuring it out, and Saddam for pretending he did have WMD.

Amazing, Bush, Cheney, Rummy etc. have no responsibility at all?

AH, "everybody" apparently doesn't include France, as the French were the ones saying, wait, let's actually find proof of these WMDs. Since it turns out that the French were right and the Bush Administration was not, will you apologize on behalf of right-wingers to the French?

'Amazing, Bush, Cheney, Rummy etc. have no responsibility at all?
'

Of course not. Great men, all of them. Just like Reagan and Nixon and Ford. All great men.

Has anyone figured out which conservative think tank AH works for yet? He can't be doing posting here as a hobby. Nobody has a life that pathetic.

AH, can you post all the quotes from after the time when the inspectors were let back in? I only saw one above and it was from a guy who wanted to be president which according to the right means he's not credible, on anything, unless he's a republican.

Hey, Fred. Do you have a day job?

Has anyone figured out which conservative think tank AH works for yet? He can't be doing posting here as a hobby. Nobody has a life that pathetic.

Well, it's not like he's serving in Iraq or Afghanistan or anything like that.

Scott Ritter knew the "intel" was wrong. And the warmongers and MSM did everything they could to marginalize/smear him. And I've not hear one word of aplology or remorse from any of the guilty parties.

Stand-in;
if it were up to me, I'd fire American Hawk and replace him with you.

If it were up to Bush, he'd give him a Medal of Freedom. And maybe Viceroyship of an Iraqi province.

Fred;
AEI. Their operatives tend to astroturf through gmail for some reason.

Hawk is usually just a pitiful example of the sort of brain-dead reasoning he needs to keep his nose firmly up Bush's posterior while telling everyone on every public forum he can access that it smells like the most wonderfully fragrant of roses.

But in this case, he can post some of the quotes on the list he posted only because the Democrats were so eager not to look too dove-ish, so they grasped at whatever straws the Bush administration put in front of them and helped pump up the hysteria. They were willfully gullible.

And Hillary more than any of them would like everyone to forget how willfully gullible she was:

"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 ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
-- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

She's doing nothing here but regurgitating what the Bush administration fed her, because the polls said that this was what the public wanted to hear.

Someone please ask her why she had such a hard time seeing through Bush's lies for so many years, while others (including Obama) weren't fooled.

So, will this make as much of a splash as the Foley story?

I'm thinking not. Too many "technicalities". It's just a war started under false pretenses after all. Not like it can be undone.

Ooops--that should be "heard" one word of apology...

Anyone notice "Curveball" looks a lot like Geraldo Rivera?
I smell a story here.

For an archive of Iraq intel and WMD documents and news, see:
"The Iraq Intel and WMD Documents."

Hmmm, let's finish the thought process here. Everyone together now; so if they new that all the apparent reasons for invading were bogus, why did Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld have the US military invade Iraq ??

Has anyone figured out which conservative think tank AH works for yet?

Office of Special Plans?

Drumheller has been peddling this for well over a year now, including a 60 Minutes interview last April, and a book last October. Back then it was all over the Net.

Why is this suddenly a great news flash?

"Hey, Fred. Do you have a day job?"

Nope. I made a killing and retired early.

And you?

"They knew Saddam didn't have a nuclear program. They knew he didn't have mobile bio labs. They knew he didn't have drones. They knew."

That's possible, but not proven. What is proven is that they knew they DIDN'T know, but lied and said they knew. Either way, the fires of hell await them.

"If there's just the slightest percentage of a chance that the issue is real, it justifies whatever actions we have to take."

Oh, wait. Sorry. That's Global Warming.

I found ChickenHawks portfolio page!!!

Global Misinformation Campaign was Used to Build Case for War
March 16, 2004 Knight Ridder

Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden.

In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, weren't confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department.

Nevertheless, U.S. officials and others who supported a pre-emptive invasion quoted the allegations in statements and interviews without running afoul of restrictions on classified information or doubts about the defectors' reliability.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0316-02.htm

So according to AH and he is most often right,Is telling us that the Great Bill Clinton launched 850 well placed missles took care of Saddams Nuclear program,His Bio program and his Chem program all without one loss of life did not have to invade.My hats off to Bill Clinton,The man did two wars without any loss of troops,The man is truly a God.

Kinda reminds me, in a very loose way, of a grown up character on That 70's Show. The Latin dude.

ChickenHawks portfolio page!!!

damn! you had me all excited there for a minute. Thought it was his stock portfolio and I'd be able to retire and spend the rest of my days drooling on the keyboard!

"Curveball" looks like Omar Sharif in Dr. Zhivago -- which is probably why the Bushistas believed him.

Curveball is Tony Orlando??

Who knew?

I thought Republicans believed in less government, not more. Bush only justified the need for Congress to have their own CIA -- to make sure the President was feeding Congress the real truth, not his cherry picked pipe dreams.

The knew Saddam didn't have a nuclear program. They knew he didn't have mobile bio labs. They knew he didn't have drones. They knew.

C'mon, Kevin, what gives? Finish the statement:

...and they lied about it.

"They knew Saddam didn't have a nuclear program."

- Who they? Cheney still knows he did.

Heretofore I refer to Hawkster as Henery, the undergrown chickenhawk.

Kevin Drum >"...The knew Saddam didn't have a nuclear program. They knew he didn't have mobile bio labs. They knew he didn't have drones. They knew."

Please try to keep up will you ?

Most of the entire planet knew in 2002 that it was ALL bulls*it (Cheney`s "...north and west and east..." was the ultimate clue)

You are just a little late to the party

Sheesh !

"A nation that continues to make distinctions between its fighting man and its thinking man will have its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards." - Thucydides

I'm shocked! Team Bush lied?

Fold that up and put in a box on the mantle.

American Hawk, what would convince you members of the Bush administration manipulated information to make the case against Iraq more damning?

Impeachment is for blowjobs -- what about crimes against humanity?

About the Clinton's fault meme... POTUS is like QB in football: you get too much credit or too much blame, for some things beyond your control. Part of the job. Happens on your watch, you own it.

Everybody thought Saddam had WMD.

Establishement politicians, including DLC Democrats, who could profit from the propaganda theme, told the electorate Saddam had or was pursing the acquisition of WMD.

Nader and Van Auken did not use this lie to increase their wealth or fool Americans into supporting their candidacies. That is why they have to be marginalized.

American Squawk: Everybody thought Saddam had WMD.

All those people who knew were relying on intel and intel interpretation provided by the Bush administration and it's puppets in the Pentagon and CIA.

And they lied.

So, to the extent the people you quote believed, it was because they were conned by team Bush.

Congress does not have independent access to the administration's intelligence operations.

Your lies to the contrary notwithstanding.

Nope. I made a killing and retired early.

Fred's a retired hitman?

it was because they were conned by team Bush

Being conned by team Bush should disqualify the Democrats from running for president. Instead it means they represent the established capital complex and are qualified to become president and defend the interests of the wealthy.

Dear Mr. Hawk:

All your quotes come from two time periods. 1998 when Clinton destroyed whatever was left of Saddam's WMD capacity and 2002 when the Bush Administration was lying to everybody and, unfortunately, a lot people were assuming that Bush was telling the truth. Thanks for playing, you can get your prize at the door, etc.

I know American Hawk. I have talked to him several times.

He works in the the local AM/PM cleaning toilets.

Such stuff are the conservative asslickers made of.

My sympathies are not for the family Hussein, but for the nation Iraq.

whoops. mhr mailed it in @6:16pm
ah well, can't really blame him.

mhr, you forgot to mention that Saddam was also a great friend to President Reagan and his special envoy Donald Rumsfeld.

Not to be contrarian or anything but in spite of his other crimes, it's a fact that during Saddam's regime, women weren't afraid to walk around in Baghdad.
Just like that nasty Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan we helped to defeat -- the one that foolishly allowed women to go to school. What the hell were they thinking?

Just sayin'

Brojo, are you saying that Rumsfeld was for Saddam before he was against him?

Colin Powell drank the koolaid....He ignored the Powell Doctrine and made a choice to support President Screwball....Savvy players don't fall for Curveballs or Screwballs......Powell needs to be accountable.

It doesn't matter how many Democrats thought Saddam had WMD's....Iraq is Bush's Folly...and history will decide if he's the worst or second worst President in American History...(Buchanan is Bush's competition).

"...The moving finger writes and having writ moves on....nor all your piety or wit shall cancel half a line nor all your tears wash out a word of it...." The Rubiyat

The knew Saddam didn't have a nuclear program. They knew he didn't have mobile bio labs. They knew he didn't have drones. They knew.

After 911, they concluded that the CIA (and FBI as well) had been too complacent in the summer of 2001. After that, they always believed that the CIA was underestimating the threat posed by Iraq.

Bush and his team were too complacent in the summer of 2001; subsequently, they were seemingly resolved not to repeat the mistake vis-a-vis Iraq. Al Gore might have made the FBI and CIA move more aggressively and cooperatively in the summer of 2001; having thus been more effective, his administration might have been less aggressive against Iraq in 2002-2003.

What we have today is the memory of one CIA agent justifying CIA intertia toward Iraq. It might be worthwhile to have his recollections of the summer of 2001 as well. Perhaps he was working at high heat to get the CIA and FBI to move against Mohammed Atta and friends; or perhaps not.

On the whole, the Iraq war has been more costly to America than the WTC/911 attacks. This comparison might support those who think that it is never appropriate for the U.S. to act pre-emptively, but always (as in the case of Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of war) to wait alertly and let the enemy disambiguate murky circumstances. That was what Bush I did when Iraq threatened Kuwait.

'Has anyone figured out which conservative think tank AH works for yet? He can't be doing posting here as a hobby. Nobody has a life that pathetic.

'

There's one on every 'lefty' website. On Balloon Juice his name is Darrell. Come check out his work http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=7965#comments

Think about it Kevin, the inspection regime would have been pushed as far as it could go. Inspections arent just intelligence, they are the BEST kind of intelligence.

The invasion would have been an airborne invasion if the reason was really WMD's. I don't remember Powell making a case at the UN that the bio-labs and rockets had been welded to the ground.

Forty years before Powell, Adlai Stevenson made an impressive logistical case that the Soviets had transported missiles to Cuba. Forty years later Powell makes another case to the UN about Iraq using CARTOON FUCKING DRAWINGS.

this is from the LATimes, quoted by Kevin yesterday: ....The world has indeed changed since Sept. 11, 2001. Iraq must be disarmed. But even the new terrorist threats should not panic this nation into abandoning one of its guiding principles.

The Democratic presidential contenders, and the Democrats in Congress, seem to be unwilling to apply this to Iran. The presidential candidates are keeping the option of pre-emptive war "on the table", and the Congressional leaders are not even trying to pass a resolution requiring Bush to get an act of Congress before attacking Iran.

I thought freddy prinze was dead.

mhr: "Don't forget the lie about Saddam Hussein being an altogether bad guy. The truth is that he was a devoted father, a loving husband, a man with a big and generous heart ..."

Nice strawman. Did you build it all by yourself?

Kevin, this little tidbit of info, whether the quote is real or not, was obvious the day Powell went before the UN and this was the only tangible evidence he presented.

It was Powell's speech that turned me fully against the war and convinced me they were lying.

ckelly >"Fred's a retired hitman?"

Maybe he told the truth

Hmmm, must be a Democrat...

"...The growth of state power is neither a caprice of history nor the fruit of "paganism." It is the consequence of the community's effort to protect itself against irresponsible economic power." - Reinhold Niebuhr

Everybody knows, who took high school chemistry, that you get better grades on they lab report if you draw your curves first, and then plot the date.

This is just the same principle applied to matters of somewhat greater urgency.

That Clinton guy sure is great...for the Blame Game.

The mother of all Clinton-blame-game is contained in a letter to the editor in today's Chicago Trib. The author manages to blame Clinton for the wingnut take-over of the GOP and GWB getting elected, thereby blaming Clinton for *all* of the last 6 years.

Nice.

They were getting WMD intel from Ringo Starr?

spider: The Democratic presidential contenders, and the Democrats in Congress, seem to be unwilling to apply this to Iran. The presidential candidates are keeping the option of pre-emptive war "on the table", and the Congressional leaders are not even trying to pass a resolution requiring Bush to get an act of Congress before attacking Iran.

Oh, really? Funny that. According to Reuters, Mar. 1, 2007:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday said he likely would support legislation barring a U.S. attack on Iran unless Congress explicitly gave President George W. Bush the green light to do so....

...Webb's amendment would prohibit Bush from spending any money on a "unilateral military action in Iran without the express consent of the Congress," the Virginia senator told reporters on Wednesday. He said there would be some exceptions, but did not detail them.

[Jim] Webb [D-VA] said he used as a "starting point" legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in January by Republican Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina making it clear that the Iraq war resolution passed by Congress in 2002 does not authorize the use of force in Iran....

...For the past few months, congressional Democrats have been warning the Bush administration against creating a pretext for a military strike against Iran, which many fear could spark a regional conflict.

(AP) Democratic leaders in Congress lobbed a warning shot Friday at the White House not to launch an attack against Iran without first seeking approval from lawmakers....

"The president does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told the National Press Club....

...Reid made the comments as he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., spoke to the National Press Club on Democrats' view of the state of the union four days before Bush addresses Congress and the nation. His remarks were the latest Democratic display of concern about the possibility of military action in Iran and Bush's power to launch it.

Last week, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., challenged the president's ability to make such a move. In a letter to Bush, Biden asked the president to explain whether the administration believes it could attack Iran or Syria "without the authorization of Congress, which does not now exist."

Gosh Kevin, are you saying that Bush lied about WMD? I remember when you used to think that was crazy talk.

Dear American hawk:

Fuck you, you anti-American partisan fuckwad.

Hussein did have a WMD program in the early-to-mid 90's. It was reasonable to suspect that he still had one in the late 90's and rhetoric based on that assumption was not objectionable. But no Democrat was advocating war based on those suspicions in the late 90's.

None of your quotes from after the time Bush began his propaganda campaign mean jack shit because, of course, lots of people assumed Bush couldn't be lying so flagrantly. You can't excuse Bush's lies just because other people unknowingly made false statements as a result of Bush's knowing false statements.

Many of us figured out he was lying before the war. I personally came to that conclusion a few months before the war began. But even a Bush hater like myself only gradually came to that conclusion because it just seemed incredible that Bush could lie in such a huge way.

...thereby blaming Clinton for *all* of the last 6 years

In logic, this is known as the 'post cock, ergo propter cock' fallacy...

Sure, in 2002 all the politicians (including Saddam) SAID that they believed Saddam had WMDs. And all of them except Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld had the same motive: they were afraid of looking weak.

Saddam didn't want war any more than the Democrats. All of them wanted to talk tough but not unleash the chaos of war. I suspect that all of them had doubts, but saw no harm in ranting about the idea of WMDs.

Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld thought they knew that Iraq would be a cherry pick with bodacious oil options. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld used the unsupported claims of WMDs as the excuse for going to war, and political war opponents were afraid to stand up for what they REALLY believed. If any of them questioned the rationale, Republican mouthpieces piled on with accusations of cowardice, insufficient hatred for America's enemies, failure to make America secure, sympathy for terrorists, etc.

So now we all see the danger of playing along with paranoid fantasies to ingratiate yourself with the crowd. And we also see the danger of thinking you know how easy something is going to be when you know very little, and aren't willing to listen to expert advice.

Jesus Christ! Why would anyone trust Lando Calrissian after they saw what he did to Han Solo?

You damn right they knew, Kevin. That's why I have been screaming for impeachment since 2003. The invasion of Iraq was a war crime and anyone who supported the invasion is an accessory before the fact and anyone who supports the continued occupation is an accessory after the fact - to mass murder.

By the way, I loved Curveball when he sang "Knock Three Times", "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" and "Candida" with his dynamite backup singers, Dawn!

You damn right they knew, Kevin. That's why I have been screaming for impeachment since 2003. The invasion of Iraq was a war crime and anyone who supported the invasion is an accessory before the fact and anyone who supports the continued occupation is an accessory after the fact - to mass murder.

By the way, I loved Curveball when he sang "Knock Three Times", "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" and "Candida" with his dynamite backup singers, Dawn!

I never did trust that Neil deGrasse Tyson character, what with that pseudo-French name and all that talk about 'black holes' and stuff. Pfeh.

I'm currently re-reading Bob Woodwards "Plan of Attack", generally acknowledged as THE 'insider' account of the lead-up to war. Knowing what we now know (& what many of us suspected way back then) it now reads VERY differently. What struck me on 1st reading as a blandly qualified endorsement of Bush's leadership skills & some insider gossip about the Powell-Cheney feud, on re-reading seems much more alarming & telling about the various "real" & other quite consciously fabricated reasons for war.

Perhaps most shocking is how from the very 1st days of taking power the entire administration ignored all the CRYSTAL CLEAR warnings they recieved about terrorism & al-Qeda & are instead 100% FIXATED on invading Iraq. This is 9 months before 9/11. Rumsfield is asking for War Plans. Demanding they be rewritten pronto. Cheney is monomaniacal. Rice is a sleazy enabler. Tenet is the go-to yes guy who knows better but says nothing. Within hours of the 9/11 attacks - on the very fucking same day - Rumsfield & Cheney are trying to figure out how they can make this about Iraq.

Powell, Armitage & poor old Brett Scowcroft emerge as ineffectual Cassandras, trying to stop what they could all see as the inexorable, slow-mo progress to a disastrous war & nightmarish occupation. It becomes a tragedy of Shakepearian cruel irony when Powell is himself co-opted to address the UN- knowing what he knows about the flimsiness of the case.

They all knew. They knew that Chalabi & Curveball & Doug Feith were telling Cheney/Rumsfield/Wolfowitz/Bush only & exactly what they wanted to hear. Veering, even microscopically off-message would bring the full & massively augmented weight of the administration upon anyone who was less than gung-ho. That not only applied to Americans - Chirac, Schroeder, Hans Blix, el-Baradai, Kofi Annan - all men who proved to be perfectly correct about the fallacies & perils of going into this war - felt the considerable weight of the Bush Administration's ire.

In the end, with the reprehensible complicity of the media, it became almost impossible for any public figure - from politician to popstar to pundit - to say what so many believed - that the case for war was illogical at best & dishonest at worst. Ultimately though, while it's tempting to blame those who gave up, those who should have known better - from Powell & Rice to Clinton/Kerry/Edwards to Tom Friedman & even Kevin Drum - they are not the authors or impetus behind this war, at worst they are the good men & women who didn't do as much as they could. For those of us who marched in the street, who shouted ourselves hoarse, who were called "supporters of tyranny & terror" it's hard not to resent the capitulation of media & political figures who had to know better. Such resentment however is ultimately misplaced.

The real authors & impetus behind the disastrous invasion & occupation of Iraq are relatively few & their culpability is undeniable. For those who have never read Plan of Attack, I recommend it highly. For those that have, I recommend even more highly, read it again. With the benefit of hindsight it is a completely new book.

There's an aspect of this story that is still not understood or acknowledged, and that is that all through the 90s it was profitable for consultants to say that Hussein had WMD. And it was a relatively harmless consulting gig--as long as nobody actually called the bluff by invading.

Yes, these guys knew that Saddam did not have the stuff. His son-in-law showed up in the mid-90's and did an interview on 60 Minutes saying that Saddam had destroyed his stockpiles after the first Iraq War, for crying out loud.

But if you're an ex-military weapons consultant (with Scott Ritter being the best example,) you can't make money by telling anybody that there's no problem. So the thing to do was find enough evidence to imply that Saddam MIGHT have the weapons, and propose plans ad infinitum for investigating further, deterring him from developing more, creating what-if scenarios, etc. A guy can't get paid for "there's nothing there," but he can get paid for saying "Hey, you might have a problem and I can help you solve it." And, a politician who joins in with the palaver can look tough on terror--and as long as nobody pushes too hard, there are very few consequences.

Into this climate of agreed-on brinksmanship came the Bush administration, determined to get Iraq, regardless of the truth. Now everybody who has been touting the concept that Hussein might be packing heat is stuck, because if they admit the truth, they have to admit that they, um, exaggerated the facts in order to build up their own importance and make easy money that they would otherwise have had to make by thinking and writing about hard stuff.

To his credit, Scott Ritter tried to stop the ball from rolling downhill, but he had already destroyed his credibility by spouting the WMD drivel for years before, so his sudden change of heart left him open to the ridicule which was eventually and perhaps rightly heaped upon him.

I think it is this failure to understand the exact mechanism by which a convenient pretense became a lobster trap for a whole group of military consultants, that keeps us from really coming to grips with the issue of why so few people with military "expertise" were willing to throw themselves in front of the train to stop the invasion.

…Bush and his team were too complacent in the summer of 2001…spider at 6:47 PM

…That was what Bush I did when Iraq threatened Kuwait. spider at 6:47 PM

In a seemingly distant event is a conversation between Saddam Hussein and U. S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie on July 25, 1990, shortly before Saddam invaded Kuwait. Bowen provides a complete transcript of their discussion. In part, the transcript reveals the following:
"Glaspie: (Pause, then she speaks very carefully) 'We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America. "Saddam smiled. "On August 2, 1990, four days later, Saddam's massed troop~ invaded and occupied Kuwait." (Bowen 145-8).

…Congressional leaders are not even trying to pass a resolution requiring Bush to get an act of Congress before attacking Iran.: spider at 7:13 PM