Who Ya Gonna Believe?

Bush is Vindicated on WMDs – NY Times Admits It

No, Bush was not right about Iraq: How conservatives misread new Times bombshell 

That NYT Story On Abandoned Munitions Doesn't Prove Bush Was Right About WMDs

The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons

I've always believed the biggest weapon of mass destruction was dragged out of a hole in the ground and hanged by the neck until dead.

 

 

 

About Those WDM In Iraq...

...that supposedly were never found:

Oh yes they were.

This, taken together with the stockpile of yellowcake that was sold to Canada, pretty much vindicates George Bush.

More.

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

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.

Looking Back

What Democrats had to say about WMDs in Iraq.

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."

Big Oops!

BBC News uses 'Iraq photo to illustrate Syrian massacre'

And your point is? A Ba'athist is a Ba'athist is a Ba'athist.

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.

Hmmmmmmm

I wonder if any of that is from Iraq? You may remember there being a theory that So-Damned-Insane moved his WMD material to Syria:

Syria has begun moving its chemical weapons stockpile out of storage, U.S. warns

No mention, though, of what Syria intends to do with them, although the assumption is on his own people. The Ba'ath Party has a history of that.

Oh My

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter gets up to 5½ years in prison

h/t Spirit of Man

"Possible 'Yellowcake' Uranium...

...in Libya"

h/t Pat Dollard who speculates on the possible Iraqi origin of this stuff.

Which President Was It Again?

I'm Sure the Leftards of the World...

...are salivating about this:

Defector admits 'fabricating' Iraq WMD intel

The WMD thing is such a small part of the larger picture which leftards throughout the world have always missed. The fact that al-Janabi was willing to do anything to help bring down the real WMD, Saddam Hussein, is the real story here. They also seem to forget that it was Hussein's refusal to comply with UN resolutions was the real reason for the invasion. And it's not like he wasn't given many, many months to come clean. He was even offered the chance to leave the country to some safe asylum, but he scoffed at the opportunity, as was typical of his behavior throughout his long and brutal career. He was renowned for playing a great game of cat and mouse, too. Does anyone remember how he played with the UN inspection team for months on end?

Atlas Shrugs on WikiLeaks

WDM program existed in Iraq

Read the whole story here.

But we knew that.