| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
07 Oct 2004 04:43:51 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Bush: Damaging blow as poll battle intensifies |
Bush: Damaging blow as poll battle intensifies
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=569566
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
07 October 2004
"Wait until Charlie gets back with the final report," Mr Bush said in
June, fending off reporters trying to get him to admit that Iraq had
no weapons of mass destruction.
Yesterday, "Charlie", aka Charles Duelfer, the chief US weapons
inspector, did get back - and his report could send shockwaves though
an election campaign in which the Iraq issue already dwarfs all
others.
Rupert Cornwell
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=18510aff.0401220342.3fdaa14c%40posting.google.com
poll polls
http://news.google.com/news?q=%20poll%20OR%20polls&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=gn
http://www.google.com/search?q=poll+OR+polls&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&tab=nw&sa=N
http://www.google.com/search?q=poll+OR+polls&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&output=search&cat=gwd/Top
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_oq=poll%20polls&safe=images&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_scoring=d&lr=&num=100&hl=en
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Bush: Damaging blow as poll battle intensifies |
07 Oct 2004 04:35:42 PM |
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On 7 Oct 2004 02:43:51 -0700, (maff) wrote:
Bush: Damaging blow as poll battle intensifies
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=569566
Bush: Damaging blow as poll battle intensifies
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
07 October 2004
"Wait until Charlie gets back with the final report," Mr Bush said in
June, fending off reporters trying to get him to admit that Iraq had
no weapons of mass destruction.
Yesterday, "Charlie", aka Charles Duelfer, the chief US weapons
inspector, did get back - and his report could send shockwaves though
an election campaign in which the Iraq issue already dwarfs all
others.
Mr Duelfer's main finding, that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass
destruction, was widely expected. But the thoroughness of the
1,000-page report, based on nine months of work by the Iraq Survey
Group led by Mr Duelfer, is a massive blow to George Bush's rationale
for going to war.
It is bound to be seized upon by John Kerry in his second debate with
Mr Bush tomorrow as further proof that the President rushed to war
without waiting for the facts.
In a clear bid to limit the damage, Mr Bush used a campaign appearance
in the swing state of Pennsylvania yesterday to stress the "real
risk", that Saddam would give weapons or know-how to terrorist groups.
"This was a risk we could not afford to take," he declared.
Nonetheless, the President's record in office now looks less
impressive than perhaps at any moment since the day in May 2003 when
Mr Bush landed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln beneath
a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished". Day after day, Mr Kerry
hammers away at the gap between the President's rosy assertions and
the bloody reality on the ground in Iraq.
One blow after another strike the President's credibility. First came
the leak of an intelligence report commissioned by the CIA which
suggested that Iraq might be sliding into civil war.
That was followed by the leaked speech of a senior CIA Middle East
specialist, who said the agency had warned the White House before the
war that an invasion would probably be followed by an insurgency and
growing sympathy for radical Islam and its goals.
Next came Mr Bush's dismal showing in the first debate in Florida,
when Mr Kerry at last turned the spotlight from 11 September and
terrorism to the current disorder in Iraq. Within 48 hours, a long
report in the New York Times showed how the administration
deliberately played down the dissent of its own experts when it
claimed Saddam had been purchasing aluminium tubes in order to build
nuclear weapons.
Those revelations, combined with Mr Duelfer's conclusion yesterday
that Saddam's nuclear programme between 1998 and 2003 had shrivelled
from minimal to non-existent, make a mockery of the apocalyptic
pre-war warning by Condoleezza Rice, the President's national security
adviser, that if the US waited, the "smoking gun" proving Iraq's WMD
threat might be "a mushroom cloud". This week, both Donald Rumsfeld,
the Defence Secretary, and Paul Bremer, the former US administrator in
post-war Baghdad, have added to the embarrassment. Mr Rumsfeld cast
doubt on links between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, another justification for
going to war, while the former head of the Coalition Provisional
Authority revealed how he had pressed, in vain, for more troops to
stabilise Iraq.
The Duelfer report was not the only embarrassment for Bush yesterday.
Another CIA report, leaked to the New York Times, is dubious that
links existed between the Saddam regime and the Jordanian terrorist
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose group has kidnapped and executed
Westerners.
US charges that Iraq had relations with al-Qa'ida were largely based
on claims that Saddam had sheltered al-Zarqawi followers. Now, even
that assertion is being questioned.
©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.
**
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Vote for Bush. Why vote for the lesser of two evils?
'Jesus' is a sock-puppet Christians utilize to add 'authority' to
whatever action they intend on taking. -Stoney
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