politicsmatters, Where the heck do you get your info? Do you simply repeat what you hear? I'm not very familiar with your postings but I'm under the impression that you're a much sharper tack then you've let on in the last comment.. If you're really interested in what happened leading to the invasion of Iraq - please skip David Corn and Noam Chomsky, okay? And read this - and if you're like some Obama supporters who think Pat Lang is a racist because he had the nerve to write historically about the Confederate Secret Service, please don't bother. And I will be disappointed in you.
http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol11/0406_l ang.asp
OK, for starters let's say I'm not thrilled about the AUMF yea vote and I will say Hillary, like others was duped. And I'm proud both of my senators, Levin & Stabenow voted nay. Hillary made the mistake of believing GWB, a sitting president would not lie and pull the inspectors out before they were allowed to finish their job. All the dissensions were taken out of the 27 page NIE. The INR & the Dept. of Energy's dissension[s] Energy were removed.
From Drinking the Koolaid..
First, there was the consistent refusal to provide witnesses and information to the U.S. Senate, especially regarding the projected costs of the war and the lack of opportunities to question key players such as General Jay Garner, who was appointed by the Defense Department to be the first head of the U.S. provisional authority in Iraq. There was also the subtle hiding of the objections of the Department of Energy and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) in the NIE of October 2002. One congressional source explained that the classified NIE was made available in its entirety to only a select few members of Congress. There were verbal briefings and an elaborate process to access the document in a secure location. But it was never clear that the 27-page unclassified version that was available to every office was missing any crucial information.
There were also false statements to Congress about providing the U.N. inspectors all the intelligence that might have helped them locate the Iraqi WMD and programs. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan has accused the administration, and especially CIA Director Tenet, of withholding information because "the truth" -- that the United States had withheld the locations of 21 high - and middle-priority sites -- might have slowed down the drive for war. The truth might have convinced Congress to take action to delay military action until the inspections were completed.
The March 7, 2003, appearance by the chairmen of UNMOVIC (Hans Blix) and the IAEA (Mohamed ElBaradei) before the U.N. Security Council was a disaster for the neoconservatives. The Iraqis and Saddam Hussein had "accelerated" cooperation with the United Nations, said Dr. Blix. Blix told the Council that Iraq had made a major concession: they had agreed to allow the destruction of the Al Samoud ballistic missiles. "We are not watching the breaking of toothpicks," Blix said. "Lethal weapons are being destroyed. . . . The destruction undertaken constitutes a substantial measure of disarmament -- indeed, the first since the middle of the 1990s." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~
Now the Al Samouds were very expensive to make for a country under sanctions and under the watchful eye of Centcomm. Saddam allowed unprecented access to the inspectors and the Samouds were destroyed until the inspectors were pulled out.
The the mission of disarming Saddam was being accomplished. And on Mar. 7, 2003, ElBaradei blew the neocons out of the water and destroyed their story completely with his revelation of the forged documents and the aluminum tubes. Col. Lang says..
But it was after the next presentation, by IAEA chairman Mohammed ElBaradei, that "all hell broke loose" in Washington. ElBaradei, in his statement, sank the U.S. intelligence community's prestigious NIE, President Bush's State of the Union address, and Colin Powell's February 5 address to the U.N. Security Council with one blow. ElBaradei was calm in what he had to say: "Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which form the basis for reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are, in fact, not authentic." The Niger yellowcake documents were forgeries. Then, ElBaradei told the press that an IAEA staff member had, in fact, used the common search engine Google to determine, within hours, that the Niger documents, which had been passed on to the U.S. embassy in Rome through an anonymous source, were fakes! Members of Congress then began to grumble. In light of the contradictions, a bill was introduced demanding that the administration disclose the intelligence reports that were the basis for the statements made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell about the Iraqi WMD threat. It was still locked in committee when the war began.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/07/sprj.ir q.un.transcript.elbaradei/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~
Yet at that point, it didn't matter. This WH had other plans and betrayed the trust of congress, the UN and the American people. Bush simply said the destruction of the Samouds was proof of the duplicity of Saddam. Blix, ElBaradei and others were aghast.
Then Illinois state Sen. Obama took a guess. He has admitted it but it is a far different story from what some of his followers say. Good for you for marching - and may there always be those that do - but neither you or I knew of the stunning level of duplicity. Ask Joe Wilson.
