| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michelle Malkin" |
| Date: |
12 Nov 2005 10:31:08 PM |
| Object: |
Senator Kennedy's Speech on Iraq |
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 05:10:37 -0800
From: Zepp <zepp@finestplanet.com>
Subject: #Kennedy's speech on Iraq
http://kennedy.senate.gov/index_high.html
[Zeppnote: over the next few days, the right wing slime machine is going
to be attacking Kennedy in every way they can -- expect to hear the word
"Chappaquiddick" a lot -- because of the speech on Iraq he gave in the
Senate yesterday. Right wingers will, without a doubt, lie about what he
said, because that's what right wingers do. They lie. That's why we're
in Iraq in the first place. Because right wingers lied to us. So in the
interests of refuting the lies in advance, here's what Kennedy actually
said.]
KENNEDY STATEMENT ON THE ADMINISTRATION'S EFFORTS TO EXAGGERATE THREATS
IN THEIR MARCH TO WAR
AS CHALABI, THE PENTAGON'S FAVORITE IRAQI DISSIDENT, VISITS D.C.,
KENNEDY REMINDS SENATE OF CHALABI'S OWN WORDS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Laura Capps/Melissa Wagoner (202) 224-2633
(As prepared for delivery)
Earlier this week, several of our Republican colleagues came to the
Senate floor and attempted to blame individual Democratic Senators for
their errors in judgment about the war in Iraq.
It was little more than a devious attempt to obscure the facts and take
the focus off the real reason we went to war in Iraq. 150,000 American
troops are bogged down in a quagmire in Iraq because the Bush
Administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence to justify
a war that America never should have fought.
As we know all too well, Iraq was not an imminent threat. It had no
nuclear weapons. It had no persuasive links to Al Qaeda, no connection
to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, and no stockpiles of weapons
of mass destruction.
But the President wrongly and repeatedly insisted that it was too
dangerous to ignore the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of
Saddam Hussein, and his ties to Al Qaeda.
In his march to war, President Bush exaggerated the threat to the
American people. It was not subtle. It was not nuanced. It was pure,
unadulterated fear-mongering, based on a devious strategy to convince
the American people that Saddam's ability to provide nuclear weapons to
Al Qaeda justified immediate war.
Administration officials suggested the threat from Iraq was imminent,
and went to great lengths to convince the American people that it was.
At a roundtable discussion with European journalists last month,
Secretary Rumsfeld deviously insisted: "I never said imminent threat."
In fact, Secretary Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee on
September 18, 2002, ".Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq
is not imminent -- that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having
nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain."
In May 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether we
went to war "because we said WMD were a direct and imminent threat to
the United States." Fleischer responded, "Absolutely."
What else could National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have been
suggesting, other than an imminent threat -- an extremely imminent
threat -- when she said on September 8, 2002, "We don't want the smoking
gun to be a mushroom cloud."
President Bush himself may not have used the word "imminent", but he
carefully chose strong and loaded words about the nature of the threat
-- words that the intelligence community never used -- to persuade and
prepare the nation to go to war against Iraq.
In the Rose Garden on October 2, 2002, as Congress was preparing to vote
on authorizing the war, the President said the Iraqi regime "is a threat
of unique urgency."
In a speech in Cincinnati on October 7, President Bush Specifically
invoked the danger of nuclear devastation: "Facing clear evidence of
peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that
could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
At an appearance in New Mexico on October 28, 2002, after Congress had
voted to authorize war, and a week before the election, President Bush
said Iraq is a "real and dangerous threat."
At a NATO summit on November 20, 2002, President Bush said Iraq posed a
"unique and urgent threat."
In Fort Hood, Texas on January 3, 2003, President Bush called the Iraqi
regime a "grave threat."
Nuclear weapons. Mushroom cloud. Unique and urgent threat. Real and
dangerous threat. Grave threat. These words were the Administration's
rallying cry for war. But they were not the words of the intelligence
community, which never suggested that the threat from Saddam was
imminent, or immediate, or urgent.
It was Vice President Cheney who first laid out the trumped up argument
for war with Iraq to an unsuspecting public. In a speech on August 26,
2002, to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he asserted: ".We now know that
Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.Many of us are
convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon." As we
now know, the intelligence community was far from certain. Yet the Vice
President had been convinced.
On September 8, 2002, he was even more emphatic about Saddam. He said,
"[We] do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement
system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to
build a nuclear weapon." The intelligence community was deeply divided
about the aluminum tubes, but Vice President Cheney was absolutely certain.
One month later, on the eve of the watershed vote by Congress to
authorize the war, President Bush said it even more vividly. He said,
"Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes.which are
used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. If the Iraqi regime is able
to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little
larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less
than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be
crossed.Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology
to terrorists."
In fact, as we now know, the intelligence community was far from
convinced of any such threat. The Administration attempted to conceal
that fact by classifying the information and the dissents within the
intelligence community until after the war, even while making dramatic
and excessive public statements about the immediacy of the danger.
In October 2002, the intelligence agencies jointly issued a National
Intelligence Estimate stating that "most agencies" believed that Iraq
had restarted its nuclear program after inspectors left in 1998, and
that, if left unchecked, Iraq "probably will have a nuclear weapon
during this decade."
The State Department's intelligence bureau, however, said the "available
evidence" was inadequate to support that judgment. It refused to predict
when "Iraq could acquire a nuclear device or weapon."
About the claims of purchases of nuclear material from Africa, the State
Department's intelligence bureau said that claims of Iraq seeking to
purchase nuclear material from Africa were "highly dubious." The CIA
sent two memorandums to the White House stressing strong doubts about
those claims.
But the following January, in 2003, the President included the claims
about Africa in his State of the Union Address, and conspicuously cited
the British government as the source of that intelligence.
Information about nuclear weapons was not the only intelligence
distorted by the Administration. On the question of whether Iraq was
pursuing a chemical weapons program, the Defense Intelligence Agency
concluded in September 2002 that "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."
That same month, however, Secretary Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed
Services Committee that Saddam has chemical weapons stockpiles.
He said, "We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological
weapons of mass destruction," that Saddam "has amassed large clandestine
stocks of chemical weapons." He said that "he has stockpiles of chemical
and biological weapons," and that Iraq has "active chemical, biological
and nuclear programs." He was wrong on all counts.
Yet the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate actually quantified
the size of the stockpiles, stating that "although we have little
specific information on Iraq's CW stockpile, Saddam probably has stocked
at least 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 500 metric tons of CW
agents -- much of it added in the last year." In his address to the
United Nations on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell went
further, calling the 100 to 500 metric ton stockpile a "conservative
estimate."
Secretary Rumsfeld made an even more explicit assertion in his interview
on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" on March 30, 2003. When asked
about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, he said, "We know where they
are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south
and north somewhat."
The Administration's case for war based on the linkage between Saddam
Hussein and Al Qaeda was just as misguided.
Significantly here as well, the Intelligence Estimate did not find a
cooperative relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. On the contrary,
it stated only that such a relationship might develop in the future if
Saddam was "sufficiently desperate" -- in other words, if America went
to war. But the estimate placed "low confidence" that, even in
desperation, Saddam would give weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda.
A year before the war began, senior Al Qaeda leaders themselves had
rejected a link with Saddam. The New York Times reported last June that
a top Al Qaeda planner and recruiter captured in March 2002 told his
questioners last year that "the idea of working with Mr. Hussein's
government had been discussed among Al Qaeda leaders, but Osama bin
Laden had rejected such proposals." According to the Times, an Al Qaeda
chief of operations had also told interrogators that it did not work
with Saddam.
Mel Goodman, a CIA analyst for 20 years, put it bluntly: "Saddam Hussein
and bin Laden were enemies. Bin Laden considered and said that Saddam
was the socialist infidel. These were very different kinds of
individuals competing for power in their own way and Saddam Hussein made
very sure that Al Qaeda couldn't function in Iraq."
In February 2003, investigators at the FBI told the New York Times they
were baffled by the Administration's insistence on a solid link between
Al Qaeda and Iraq. One investigator said: "We've been looking at this
hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's
there."
But President Bush was not deterred. He was relentless in playing to
America's fears after the devastating tragedy of 9/11. He drew a clear
link -- and drew it repeatedly -- between Al Qaeda and Saddam.
On September 25, 2002, at the White House, President Bush flatly
declared: "You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you
talk about the war on terror."
In his State of the Union Address in January 2003, President Bush said,
"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and
statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and
protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda," and that he could
provide "lethal viruses" to a "shadowy terrorist network."
Two weeks later, in his Saturday radio address to the nation, a month
before the war began, President Bush described the ties in detail,
saying, "Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to
terrorist networks ."
He said: "Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda have met at
least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and
document-forgery experts to work with Al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided
Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. An Al Qaeda
operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in
acquiring poisons and gases. We also know that Iraq is harboring a
terrorist network headed by a senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner. This
network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and
many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad."
Who gave the President this information? The NIE? Scooter Libby? Chalabi?
In fact, there was no operational link and no clear and persuasive
pattern of ties between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda. A 9/11
Commission Staff Statement in June of 2004, put it plainly: "Two senior
bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between
Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda
cooperated on attacks against the United States." The 9/11 Commission
Report stated clearly that there was no "operational" connection between
Saddam and Al Qaeda. That fact should have been abundantly clear to the
President. Iraq and Al Qaeda had diametrically opposing views of the world.
The Pentagonšs favorite Iraqi dissident, Ahmed Chalabi, is actually
proud of what happened. "We are heroes in error," Chalabi said in
February 2004. "As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely
successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad.
What was said before is not important. The Bush Administration is
looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords, if he wants."
What was said before does matter. The President's words matter. The Vice
President's words matter. So do those of the Secretary of State, the
Secretary of Defense and other high officials in the Administration. And
they did not square with the facts.
The Intelligence Committee agreed to investigate the clear
discrepancies, and it's important that they get to the bottom of this,
and find out how and why President Bush took America to war in Iraq.
Americans are dying. Already more than 2000 have been killed, and more
than 15,000 have been wounded.
The American people deserve the truth. It's time for the President to
stop passing the buck and for him to be held accountable.
--
If you're poor and steal during a national crisis, you're a looter.
If you're rich and steal during a national crisis, you're a Republican.
Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!
Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com
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--
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
Michelle Malkin (Mickey) aa list#1
BAAWA Knight & Bible Thumper Thumper
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
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