An Update on the...

..."Bush lied, people died" meme:
The Dangerous Lie That ‘Bush Lied’

"In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”

I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction—a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community’s determination that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—I am, therefore, keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the “Bush lied” allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.

The intelligence community’s 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated, in a formal presentation to President Bush and to Congress, its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction—a belief in which the NIE said it held a 90% level of confidence. That is about as certain as the intelligence community gets on any subject.

Recall that the head of the intelligence community, Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, famously told the president that the proposition that Iraq possessed WMD was “a slam dunk.” Our WMD commission carefully examined the interrelationships between the Bush administration and the intelligence community and found no indication that anyone in the administration sought to pressure the intelligence community into its findings. As our commission reported, presidential daily briefs from the CIA dating back to the Clinton administration were, if anything, more alarmist about Iraq’s WMD than the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate."

[---]

"Our WMD commission ultimately determined that the intelligence community was “dead wrong” about Saddam’s weapons. But as I recall, no one in Washington political circles offered significant disagreement with the intelligence community before the invasion. The National Intelligence Estimate was persuasive—to the president, to Congress and to the media."

[---]

"It is worth noting, however, that when Saddam was captured and interrogated, he told his interrogators that he had intended to seek revenge on Kuwait for its cooperation with the U.S. by invading again at a propitious time. This leads me to speculate that if the Bush administration had not gone to war in 2003 and Saddam had remained in power, the U.S. might have felt compelled to do so once Iraq again invaded Kuwait."

RTWT

About Those Chemical Weapons...

Dubya Vindicated?

NY Times Just Blasted Out of Existence Biggest Myth About George W. Bush & Iraq War

"Although it has been claimed before that chemical weapons had been found in Post-Hussein Iraq, due to new documents uncovered by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the New York Times is now reporting it in a piece, “The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons.”

While various news sources had reported the finding before, all assertions that Hussein had chemical weapons in some capacity (weapons-grade or not – they had been hidden from U.N. inspectors) were largely scoffed at as nothing more than supercilious bunk. Well, behold…

The news report from the Times explains the now not-secret revelation that there had been WMDs in Iraq, after all:

From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule.

In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."

This exoneration hasn't taken as long as I thought it would. But I knew it would. The lamestream media has some 'splaining to do, but I'm not holding my breath.

A Little Bit Out Dated...

...but still relevant:

Wikileaks, Again

These are a bit old, but, what they revealed may be a bit more than they would like:

WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq – With Surprising Results

"By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.

An initial glance at the WikiLeaks war logs doesn’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq. But chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."

Beaten, Shocked, Eyes Gouged: Iraq Abuse, WikiLeaked

"Some of the more gruesome and unseemly accounts of abuse are the result of Iraqi security forces. In Anbar Province in 2005 — then the heart of the Sunni insurgency — Iraqi police threw a cat on a detainee’s face, threatened him with knives and beat him with cables; Iraqi National Guardsmen and even U.S. troops may have been involved. Baghdad cops may have also deprived detainees of medical treatment: one account describes detainees as “walking wounded,” showing visible “open sores”; it notes that some “detainees have died of disease in recent weeks.”

Detainees in Mosul in 2005 — just months after insurgents briefly overran U.S. and Iraqi forces to control the city in November 2004 — told U.S. troops that they confessed to being terrorists so they could be transferred to U.S. custody, a way to escape the beatings they received from Iraqi soldiers. That same year, a detainee questioned by Iraqi soldiers passed out, leading the soldiers to report that he was on drugs. They sent him to an Iraqi police station, where he never woke up. His death was classified as a drug overdose; a U.S. report says his body appeared not to have exhibited signs of abuse."

Damn Straight!!!

Howard defends decision to invade Iraq

"Mr Howard told the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Tuesday night the decision was taken in the belief that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, based on intelligence at that time."

[---]

"Mr Howard also hit out at claims by some that he led Australia into the 2003 Iraq war on the basis of a lie."

[---]

"Mr Howard said there was a "near universal" belief that Iraq had WMDs, including from former Labor leader Kevin Rudd.

"After the fall of Saddam, and when it became apparent that stockpiles of WMDs had - to me unexpectedly - not been found in Iraq, it was all too easy for certain people to begin claiming that Australia had gone to war based on a lie," Mr Howard said.

"Not only does [that claim] impugn the integrity of the decision-making process at the highest level, but also the professionalism and integrity of intelligence agencies here and elsewhere.

"Some of their key assessments proved to be wrong, but that is a world away from those assessments being the product of deceit and/or political manipulation.

And of course, the lovers of peace were outside demonstrating their commitment:

"The chants of street protesters could be heard faintly inside the city hotel where Mr Howard spoke.

The venue was switched from the nearby Lowy Institute after protestors caused a last-minute venue change."

Emphasis mine throughout.

DUH!!!

Yup!

Media coverage was ‘harmful’ during kidnapping: former Canadian diplomat

"Former Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler, whose kidnapping by al-Qaeda made international headlines, says media “blackouts” of such events can prevent ransom demands from escalating to the point where they cannot be met."

[---]

"Fowler told Postmedia News Monday that his web-savvy captors viewed media coverage of his kidnapping on laptop computers and Nokia cellphones.

From it, he said, they came to believe he was on a “secret mission” in Niger, a suggestion reported in The Globe and Mail.

“Was it harmful to me? Yes, likely,” he said. “The idea that you can write things here that won’t impact there is just — in this globalized world — crazy.”

Fowler doesn’t know whether the information increased the cost of his release, but he contends it had the potential to complicate matters."

I have been both astounded and disgusted with the media coverage of terrorist activities, both during the Iraq war and after. They took the role of a fifth column to new and despicable heights, acting, as they did, as mouth pieces for every two-bit throat slasher and head chopper they could possible shill for. Free publicity for the enemy and treason against the countries in which they enjoyed freedoms that people in those repressed countries could only dream about. I've been a news junkie all my life and I've watched the lamestream media go down its long, self-inflicted decline. It was the last straw for me. It's why I put my television in storage and will only take it out some day to haul it to the recycling facility.

And it's not just the news coverage that's a turnoff. It's what passes for entertainment, too. Garbage. All of it.

Blogs rule!!!

Every Once In A While...

...I do a search of my own blog using a specific keyword. Because things are heating up between Turkey and Syria, I decided to search using the keyword "Turkey".
Here's what came up.

Interesting, no?

Meanwhile.

I've Become A Comment Freak...

...on Sun Net News' website. The other day some got to reinventing recent history by claiming Saddam Hussein was a jolly good fellow. One quoted the tired old meme about 600,000 having been killed as a result of the American invasion - by the Americans. This figure is taken from Lancet's study which assumes that war casualties spread the same way communicable disease spreads. Then there was a discussion about how many people Saddam Hussein himself had killed. Of course, I went looking. Here's what I found:

How many people did Saddam Hussein kill?

How Many People Has Saddam Hussein Killed?

How may people did Saddam Hussein kill?

How many people did Saddam Hussein kill?[Not the same as previous link.]

Documented human rights violations 1979–2003

How Many People Has Saddam Hussein Killed?

Saddam Hussein

Top 5 crimes of Saddam Hussein

Worst genocides of the 20th and 21st centuries

How many people did Saddam kill?

Very Interesting Interview...

...with Condoleezza Rice.

BTW, Dave. I told her you were interested. With a puzzled look on her face, she said: "Dave who?"

I Often Wonder...

...what happened to this guy:



And is he still telling lies?

Interesting News from Kuwait

"Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah named a new cabinet on Tuesday with 10 new faces, including the oil and defence ministers, and no women, despite objections from the opposition.

Hani Hussein, a former chief executive officer of the national oil conglomerate Kuwait Petroleum Corp, was appointed oil minister, replacing Mohammad al-Baseeri."

[---]

"The new cabinet does not include a single Islamist, the largest opposition bloc that scored an impressive victory in the February 2 general elections when they won 23 seats in the 50-member parliament."

[---]

"The snap elections were held after youth-led street protests forced former prime minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad Al-Sabah to step down in late November"

. Interesting about the youth rebellion getting results, too, but there's a downside. For the first time since 2006 there are no women in the cabinet.

I remember during the Iraq war, Kuwait made several reforms amounting to greater democratization of their political system. Seems they are in full retreat from that. I miss Dubya.

Obligatory American Pull-Out From Iraq Post

About the only thing that stands out here is the numbers:

Last U.S. troops leave Iraq, ending war

"The last convoy of U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraq on Sunday, ending nearly nine years of war that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and left a country grappling with political uncertainty."

Don't let Lancet know.

Interesting Piece...

...about the ongoing violence in Iraq.

Johns Hopkins

Sometimes I can detect a pattern in the visits I get to my blog. Very frequently people from Johns Hopkins University land on this old entry.

Hopefully, they are teaching students what not to do when conducting research.

Previous.

CBC Searches Further Afield for Dreaded "Hidden Agenda"

Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.

Half-truths and hidden agendas in bin Laden narrative

"Narrative". That's one of leftydom's favourite code words. They speak the truth. Everyone else spins a "narrative", you know.

"When President Barack Obama gave the word to launch Operation Neptune Spear, the daring assault on Osama bin Laden's compound, there were actually two combined operations set in motion.

We've heard much about the first, the Navy SEALs' raid to eliminate bin Laden; almost nothing about the second.

The second was the use of what the White House and Pentagon call "Strategic Communications," a PR strategy to dominate the narrative of an event for broad political aims worldwide."

Oh, CBC. What would we do without you? We plebeians would never be able to figure that out. No siree.

"I'm not critical of the raid itself, which I believe was masterfully directed. But I do have concerns about the current trend toward what is being called the "operationalization of information."

As we saw when a number of false, or at best half-true, statements poured out of the White House in that first day of the bin Laden drama, we now must parse news statements from supposedly authoritative sources with ever greater care for hidden agendas.

Forget traditional government PR, this is a much more muscular doctrine to combine many pointed information flows into a very solid arm of U.S. policy."

Oh come on Brian. You're about the same age as I am. You know better than that. There's nothing new about governments putting spin on things, especially during times of war. What you're really upset about is that you have to work extra hard to get the evidence you need to support your "narrative". Too bad, so sad. The laugh is on you. CBC has become a joke.

For example:

Canada offered to aid Iraq invasion: WikiLeaks

This is news? I knew that years ago. Where were you, CBC? Maybe something like this would have been a better headline: "Wikileaks digs up old news: Yawn"

Or "Epic fail: CBC lets Wikileaks do their work for them".

Why are we giving CBC a billion+ $CDN a year?

It's Happening Sooner Than I Thought It Would

Most elected leaders are vilified while they are in office and for some time afterward, either by the left or the right. Eventually, though, as generations pass, and historians do their job of assessing a given presidency or prime ministership, more reasoned voices prevail. This is partly because the impact of decisions made by said president or prime minister aren't always apparent for many years afterward. Often the consequences of decisions made take years to manifest.

I am surprised at the bit of a comeback that George W. Bush is getting in the press. He was so vilified, I thought it would take two or three generations before the press could write about him with something close to rational analysis. But look what's coming from the Guardian, of all places:

Decision Points by George Bush - review

"This self-serving memoir confirms that George W Bush is a moronic war-monger who can't think straight, can't string two words together and spent his presidency looking for countries to invade, oil to snatch and ways to make the world a more dangerous place.

There, I've said it, and the conventional wisdom chatterati will nod amen to that. The problem is that none of the above is true. Cue avalanche of Guardian Online vitriol."

And the vitriol does come, on cue, like sheeple.

Ummm. I Don't Think He Was Thinking About You...

...Nuri. He only thinks of himself, and even then, he's full of shit. But I'll have more on that later on.

It's All About the Oil, Illegal Wars, and Other Nonsense from the Left (Old Post Previously Unpublished)

[Note: Dead links have been removed]

Great chart showing oil reserves and production of leading oil countries. Iraq's is minuscule.

Big U.S. oil companies make deal to return to Iraq

Saudi Arabia

Middle East

Tehran Times

Hartford

Middle East Crude Oil Production and Exports

"Currently over 60% of exports from the Middle East are destined for Asian markets, where they sell at a premium. The geographical proximity of the two regions, growing Asian supply deficit and absence of alternative sources for Asian countries will result in an even larger share of eastern sales for Middle East Oil. However, the relationship between Asian refiners and Middle East producers is not seamless. Asian refiners have complained for some time about the premium they are charged on Middle East oil. In the future it will become tougher for producers to charge this premium, and also for Asia refiners to pay the extra, because of consistently poor refining economics in the Asia-Pacific region, and deregulation in Asian countries exposing domestic refiners to harsher economic realities."

Legality of invasion

Iraq's attempt to enter Saudi Arabia

Is there a military solution to terror

Lancet Study Farce

Democrats on Iraq's WDM

Iraq's oil contracts, March 2008

Iraq invites oil companies

Iraq Energy Expo

World's top oil producers, 2006

ed driscoll

How many people did Saddam kill?

And from an exchange at the now defunct blog "Soldier's Dad" which I really, really miss (complete with typos in the original):

"Lisa,

The modeling in the 1970's as to what would happen if Middle East oil stopped flowing was 30,000 people a month would freeze to death in the first winter in Europe. Unemployment in Europe would reach 50% withing 90 days and unemployment in the US would reach 50% in 180 days. Envery energy dependent country in the world would face massive civil unrest. Then the real war would start.

Neither China nor India were particularly large energy consumers then. They are now.

We all need to personally thank Jane Fonda for the movie "China Syndrome" which made it politically impossible to build a nuclear power plant in the US.

Whose the worlds second largest oil producer...Russia. Really slick plan the Russians had...the way to bring the West to its knees was to cut off the oil and keep the West from actually producing an alternative.

So our usual communist sympathizer suspects on the hard left were taught to chant

"No war for Oil"
"No No to Nuclear Power"

I am I forgot...the US has enough coal to meet our energy needs for 1,000 years...and yes your car will run on gasoline refined from coal.

"No No to Coal"

In the meantime the Soviet Union went merrily along installing dictators anyplace in the world that had more than 3 drops of oil.

Hugo Chavez is too stupid to get himself elected dog catcher never mind Glorious Leader of a major oil exporting country...he had help.


Whose the hero of all the anti-war groups in the US...Hugo Chavez.

I wouldn't be surprised if the KGB sabotaged Chernobyl deliberately in an effort to convince the Western Europeans that Nuclear Power was bad, bad, bad and keep them nice and dependent.

Then we have this years presidential race...the Obama messiah is a manufactured candidate if I ever saw one...who manufactured him...some guy from Syria named Rezko. Syria is yet another Soviet puppet state whose glorious leader is a complete idiot.
SoldiersDad | 06.08.08 - 2:31 pm | #

Anand,

I don't think we can use Jerry Brown as an example. His father was a serious "Bring Home the Bacon" politician. Blather on endlessly about the "Environment"...and then happily show up
at a ground breaking for an Asbestos Factory that would employ 10,000 at $20 an hour. If an "environmentalist" builds an asbestos factory...it must be okay...right?

I used to work for a major entertainment complex in Europe...the neighbors rightfully complained about the noise.

We needed more office space...but the building was a "Historical Architectual Building".

For the price of a Mercedes Sportscar the politico manage to get the local population to "Demand" we put windows in the openings.

We had been appealing to the local "Historical Society" for years to allow us to put windows...so we could get 30K sq feet of office space below the bleachers and rent it at a tidy profit.

Once the locals were in a tizzy, the historical society relented.

Thats what a "Jerry Brown" type of politico can accomplish.

I'm sorry...but there is a world of difference between a political opportunist and an ideologue.

When I look at Obama's pals...I see Ideologues. Ideologues get people killed.

I remember an interview that Dianne Sawyer did with Yeltsin. His mother died for a lack of medication that US physicians hand out like candy to the elderly in the US. The Soviet Premiere's mother died because he couldn't get medication that the poorest of the poor elderly in the US eat like candy.

Ideology killed Yeltsin's mother.
SoldiersDad | 06.10.08 - 11:43 pm |

Lancet debunking (Old Post Previously Unpublished)

Iraq Violence, in Figures