I got a very interesting email from yet another Bush-Basher. I don't know why I source the material I do...it seems any charge from a lefty has instant weight and I should accept what they say as the truth. When I respond, I try and include source material and challenge those who disagree to actually accept some alternative explanation. Example? This, from Karl:
-----Original Message-----
From: Karl (info deleted to protect his privacy)
Sent: Mon 7/14/2003 6:13 PM
To: Alan, Greg
Cc:
Subject: WMD
I think the Imminent Threat argument for attacking Iraq immediately, (and right before the 02 election) was not based on the barrels of Saran and Anthrax that we knew Iraq possessed. We sold them these chemical and biological weapons in the mid-80's. The Imminent Threat argument was based largely on his nuclear weapon capabilities. Some of the evidence for this "program," as the President now refers to it, indeed the evidence that made it into the State of the Union speech, was known by the CIA to be forged. FORGED. Where has that little fact gotten lost in the British guaranteed French intelligence explanation? Who forged it? Why would the enemy forge documents implicating themselves? Who had the motivation to try to pass them off as legit?Now, my response. Notice the sourcing.Not true, or at a minimum misleading. I hope you have the courage to read below. Contained in an article by Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, and president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.
(http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may071103.asp) My comments are in parenthesis --"The British government did say that it believed Saddam had sought African uranium. Is it possible that the British government was mistaken? Sure. Is it possible that Her Majesty's government came by that belief based on an erroneous American intelligence report about a transaction between Iraq and Niger? Yes — but British Prime Minister Tony Blair and members of his Cabinet say that's not what happened.
"I suppose you can make the case that a British-government claim should not have made its way into the president's SOTU without further verification. But why is that the top of the TV news day after day? Why would even the most dyspeptic Bush-basher see in those 16 accurate words of President's Bush's 5,492-word SOTU an opportunity to persuade Americans that there's a scandal in the White House, another Watergate, grounds for impeachment?
"Surely, everyone does know by now that Saddam Hussein did have a nuclear-weapons-development program. That program was set back twice: Once by Israeli bombers in 1981, and then a decade later, at the end of the Gulf War when we learned that Saddam's nuclear program was much further along than our intelligence analysts had believed.
"Since Saddam never demonstrated — to the U.S., the U.N., or even to Jacques Chirac — that he had abandoned his nuclear ambitions, one has to conclude that he was still in the market for nuclear materials.
"Maybe there was no reliable evidence to support the particular intelligence report saying that Saddam had acquired yellowcake (lightly processed uranium ore) from Niger. But the British claim was only that Saddam had sought yellowcake — not that he succeeded in getting a five-pound box Fedexed to his palace on the Tigris.
"And is there even one member of the U.S. Congress who would say that it was on the basis of this claim alone that he voted to authorize the president to use military force against Saddam? Is there one such individual anywhere in America?
(It's not possible, because the vote to authorize force by the Senate was held in October (nearly unanimous) and the speech was in January of the next year. Hmmm.) "Joseph C. Wilson IV wrote an
op-ed about it in last Sunday's New York Times in which he said: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
"Actually, Wilson has plenty of choices — but no basis for his slanderous allegation. A little background: Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to verify a U.S. intelligence report about the sale of yellowcake — because Vice President Dick Cheney requested it, because Cheney had doubts about the validity of the intelligence report.
"Wilson says he spent eight days in Niger "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people" — hardly what a competent spy, detective, or even reporter would call an in-depth investigation. Nevertheless, let's give Wilson the benefit of the doubt and stipulate that he was correct when he reported back to the CIA that he believed it was "highly doubtful that any such transaction ever took place. "
"But, again, because it was "doubtful" that Saddam actually acquired yellowcake from Niger, it does not follow that he never sought it there or elsewhere in Africa, which is all the president suggested based on what the British said — and still say.
"And how does Wilson leap from there to the conclusion that Vice President Cheney and his boss "twisted" intelligence to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat"? Wilson hasn't the foggiest idea what other intelligence the president and vice president had access to.
"He was an outspoken opponent of U.S. military intervention in Iraq.
"He was recently the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions — and even the no-fly zones that protected hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.
"Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Wilson did believe that Saddam had biological weapons of mass destruction. But he raised that possibility only to argue against toppling Saddam, warning ABC's Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For example, if we're taking Baghdad or we're trying to take, in ground-to-ground, hand-to-hand combat." He added that Saddam also might attempt to take revenge by unleashing "some sort of a biological assault on an American city, not unlike the anthrax, attacks that we had last year."
I suppose he was just "exaggerating" that part...
Again, the vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq by the United States (which I might add in the Senate was something like 97-to-0) was held in October of 2002. The State of the Union speech and UN speech by Colin Powell were in January and February of 2003. These speeches were the ones in which the American people and/or Congress were "mislead" into believing a "lie?"...It's not possible, since most of the members of Congress had already based their decision on other things in October of 2002? I wonder why it is they're arguing now that they were mislead after the fact? Most likely reason? The members who are running for President want to be able to have it both ways...voting in favor of it, and now against it. Courage.
