http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0528-26.htm

by Rep. John Conyers

I think that this is important and I signed it.

I guess you like beating a dead horse!

A dead horse as long as the GOP controls the levels of independent investigations, that is....

The Downing Street Memo contains in it nothing that was not known before.

Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! -- hang him!

Wilde, Oscar
1856-1900 British Author Wit





Oh yeah, come on in Friend...

That is all!

That petition is making it's way around the forum world this weekend. Personally, I think that they should go for it,.....big time!

Perhaps they will contribute a lot of their hard earned monies and plow it back into the economy. That way something good will come out of this perfectly good waste of time. It does tend to keep the Kooks off the streets as well.

Go For it!!

Sort of like that Abu Ghraib thing, huh?

Here is an interesting article that explains the mistake of Rumsfeld on this problem.



New Yorker

Congress wants answers for Bush's deceit and incompetence.

http://www.rawstory.com/aexternal/conyers_iraq_letter_502

Sure D2. Tell me, how many of that number are not part of the Progressive Causus? Anyone with any sense knew that this would be the modus operendi if he won reelection in November.

And while I have issues with him, I am intelligent enought to know that inpeachable offenses are the least of his worries. You jerk-a-holics are just sour and spoiled over the change in direction the country is headed.

You had better learn to get over it or invest in Mylanta.

A coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups and political activists have started

http://www.AfterDowningStreet.org

oh no. the us government is on the brink of collapse. i am so afraid. help.

No, the government is not going to collapse, but you should be very afraid that Bush's corrupt house of cards will sooner or later collapse and that Congress will get its act together and impeach the lying white trash demagog.

Yes, we already knew that Bush manipulated the truth about Iraq. Every time that ignorant ba$tard opens his mouth, we get another package of lies.

Bush's Betrayal of American Conservatives:
http://www.jimbovard.com/Bush%27s%20Betray...nservatives.htm

Top Ten Farces of the Bush Administration:
http://www.jimbovard.com/Bush%20Top%20Ten%20Farces.htm

That doesn't keep that same information from being damaging. Especially since any investigation would be personally appointed by Bush. The information is there, but its like trying to file a case abou a judge in a 1 judge town. Gotta wait till you get a new judge.

Apparently Bush also cherry picked the intelligence for Russian French and British intelligence when they came to the same conclusion he had.

Did he cherry pick the intelligence Hans Blix was using when he requested that the UN pass Security Resolution 1441?

Then when Saddam refused to comply with resolution 1441, did Bush somehow control that?

Then after refusing to comply with 1441 he refused to step down from power and take political asylum as it was offered to him, did Bush somehow cause that?

There isn't enough evidence to say Bush manipulated the cause for war, he gave Saddam a ridiculously large amount of chances. America didn't believe Saddam, Britain didn't believe Saddam, French Intelligence didn't believe Saddam, Russian Intelligence didn't believe Saddam, Hans Blix didn't believe Saddam, and the UN didn't believe Saddam.

Also, hastily evacuated Chemical weapons labs, some still containing their stockpiles of Anthrax and Smallpox were found in Iraq. Under Baghdad, large amounts of Smallpox and Serin gas artillery shells were found, and Serin Gas Artillery shells were used against US troops in the war.

After viewing documents uncovered in Saddam's offices, the CIA came to the conclusion in it's CIA Post-War Comprehensive report that acquiring an arsenal of chemical and nuclear weapons was a top priority of the Hussein regime.


What DID those truck conveys contain when they rushed across the border to Syria on the eve of war?

D2 I just love it when you start popping off the the same tired old anti-bush vitriol. Just brilliant!
Too bad you can't ban me anymore!!

You are still fooled by Bush's lies. So it's no surprise that you are fooled by JohnL's malicious D2 fiction and are using the same kind of lame attempt to avoid the issue and discredit someone whose opinions you don't like.

I am not D2 and never have been D2.

Honor our troops by demanding the truth.

Demand that Congress investigate the lies leading to the Iraq war. Bush is so incompetent he believes he can get away with deliberately lying to the American people and to the US Congress. That is a felony and he should be impeached. There was no imminent threat, only imminent deceit by George W. Bush.

http://www.usalone.com/warlies.htm

Deliberately lying, ye say?

Interesting. One single memo does not overturn the following facts:

It had been political lingua franca since the Bush I years that Saddam was after WMD

Bill Clinton made is official US policy to despose Saddam Hussein and democratize Iraq

French, British, Russian, and American intelligence all arrived at the same conclusion: Saddam was actively pursuing WMD

Hans Blix came to the conclusion that Saddam was holding out on him, ans asked the UN Security Council to pass resolution 1441.

The Security Council passed just such a resolution, promising that if Saddam did not comply with UN inspectors fully, he would be met with serious consequences.

Saddam refused to comply, and Bush went to the UN security council asking that the US Coalition of the Willin be given the authority to follow through with these consequences. The vote would have passed if not for a stubborn French veto that we have since learned by motivated by illegal Oil For Food Dealings (just why IS France on the Security Council anyways?)

Ignoring the French's stubborn veto, Bush gave Saddam a 48 ultimatum: Step down from power. You will be given 100% pardon for you're crimes and political asylum in Egypt.

Saddam instead prepared for war.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Serin-gas Artillery shells were used against US forces. Not one, not two, but three different types of missiles Saddam had been banned from having after Operation: Desert Storm, were used against US forces in Iraq.

Hastily evacuated chemical weapons labs, some still with their stockpiles of Smallpox and Anthrax inside, were found in Iraq.

In a labyrinth beneath Baghdad, stockpiles of Anthrax and Serin gas artillery shells were found.

In their Post War Comprehensive Report released on 9/30/04, the CIA came to the final conclusion that acquiring an arsenal of nuclear and chemical weapons was a top priority for Saddam Hussein.

And finally...

Just WHAT, exactly, were those massive truck conveys that hurried out of Iraq and into Ba'ath party Controlled Syria on the eve of war carrying?

I didn't realize that we actually found WMDs! How did I miss that? Must be a massive liberal media cover-up. I mean, theire aren;'t even threads touting the dscovery of WMDs here!

If you want to bring up Hans Blix - he wasn't exactly a supporter of the war, now was he?

If Saddam stepped down ... was the US military going to go home?



You seem to be making the case that WMD's was the primary reason, and fully justifies, the invasion....

I am making the case that George Walker Bush did not deliberately lie about Saddam's WMD programs.

You don't have a case to make. Bush lied to Americans, lied to Congress (a felony), lied the US into a tactical and strategic military blunder, a disaster, an unnecessary and unjust war by manipulating information to fit his self serving agenda. The absolute stupidity of it is that Bush the liar and the corrupt, ignorant neocon chickenhawks and banana Republicans could all have had everything they said they wanted, stability and democracy in the middle east, just by forcing Israel into a sincere effort to make peace. The stupidity is that they are creating more terrorism, not less. That means we are becoming less safe as the botched war on terror, more killing, more violence, more torture, more imprisonment continues to increase the percentage of the world's population that hates America and wants to kill Americans.

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/05/31/lang.htm

Well, Congress, who you claim Bush lied to, has a better case to make than the priceofliberty.org

"the intelligence reporting did support the conclusion that chemical and biological weapons were within Iraq's technical capability, that Iraq was trying to procure dual use materials that could have been used to produce these weapons, and uncertainties existed about whether Iraq had fully destroyed it's pre-Gulf War stock of weapons and precursors. Iraq's efforts to deceive and evade United Nations weapons inspectors and it's inability or unwillingness to fully account for pre-Gulf War chemical and biological weapons and precursors could have led analysts to the reasonable conclusion that Iraq may have retained those materials, but intelligence analysts did not have enough information to state with certainty that Iraq "has" these weapons."

AND

"The Committee found no evidence that the IC's mischarachterization or exaggeration of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities was the result of political pressure"

http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/iraq/sic70904iraqconc.pdf

MARK

So .... you are saying that if Bush didn't think Saddam had notable WMDs then he would not have invaded?

That WMDs were the overriding justification and that he had no alterior motive? That if Saddam had stepped down the US military would have packed up and gone home?

Of course not. There are reasons to invade Iraq that transcend Saddam Hussien and his mythical WMD's. Given US's stance toward other brutal dictators, some of which reallt do have WMDs, that line of reasoning is utter BS.

What I'm getting at here is that Bush had a strong motive to lie, did he not? Many sources say that Bush pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda from the first cabinet meeting. Clinton made it a policy - basically saying "Making Iraq a democracy would be a good thing" - true. But Bush made it top priority.

What about the CIA agents who testified that they were getting leaned on to make the intelligence fit the plan? Wouldn't that be witnesses who say otherwise?

What about the grasping at straws - like the aluminum tubes and the links to al Quieda? Not to mention the State of the Union Speech where Bush had to refer to British Intel (Who - according to the Downing St. Memo, already knew that GWB was planning to skew intelligence. No stretch at all to suspect that British intelligence was leaned on, too. Especially given the STRONGER evidence against the Brits! )

If they had better evidence, then they would have used it, most surely. "We cant reveal our intelligence gathering methods" ... why not? they didn't seem to work anyways! Don't we need new ones?



So - motive: We know he wanted to do it, and the neocons wanted to do it 10+ years ago. We know that there are people who say "They put pressure on me to make the facts fit the theory". We know that the evidence against Saddam wasn't as strong as it should have been. We have evidence that the Brits were complicit.

Yes, we know Saddam *had* WMDs - we gave them to him. Thats how we know. But we also know that they break down, and that they wee old. We also know how many were used in Gulf War 1. We also know what the weapons inspectors said. We also know that Saddam didn't have the power to project power against his neighbors - much less the US. Especially with US planes overhead, and our willingness to bomb the crap out of what we thought were weapons.

But maybe you are right. GWB is an utterly moral person and would never use any sort of propaganda to achieve his goals. Your faith in government is admirable, my friend.

Because it's BS, thats why.

Fox News is now reporting on the Downing Street memo:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158228,00.html

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to Rolling Stone; Bush is a liar:
http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/reid_060105.htm

Iraq WMD Inspectors End Search, Find Nothing:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,154574,00.html

Proof Bush Fixed the Facts by Ray McGovern:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/proof_bus...d_the_facts.php