[Vision2020] Deceptions of War (repost)

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

Most of you have already seen this, so this is for Ed/Dick/Tony residing out their in their own fantasy land. 

I've chosen these examples because they were widely reported in most media outlets, including the Washington Times and Fox, and can verified by simply googling the date and topic.  I will be happy to provide other documentation if needed.

I thank Sunil for one more bullet that I've added about UN inspectors.

If odd symbols come up on your screen, you can read this at http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/deceptions.htm.

THE DECEPTIONS OF WAR: 
THE COOKING OF INTELLIGENCE ON IRAQ 
By Nick Gier 

President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are busy defending themselves against 
the charge that they deceived the American people about the reasons for going to 
war in Iraq.  Sorting through my thick Iraq file, I’ve come up with following 
examples of outright deception. 

•      Cheney continued to repeat an alleged meeting between 9/11 hijacker 
Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague in 2001, even though American and 
European intelligence agencies said the report was false. 
 
•        The bipartisan 9/11 Commission reported that there was no 
“collaborative relationship” between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, but Bush and 
Cheney blithely continued to make these charges. 
 
•         Cheney claimed that Osama bin Laden requested “terror training from 
Iraq,” but he failed to mention that Saddam’s government fail to respond to that 
request. 
 
•    "On July 14, 2003, Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein had barred United 
Nations weapons inspectors from Iraq when, in fact, they were admitted in 
November 2002 and given free rein to search suspected Iraqi weapons sites. It 
was Bush who forced the U.N. inspectors to leave in March 2003 so the invasion 
could proceed" (Consortium News, April 14, 2006) 
 
 
•         On February 8, 2003, Bush claimed that “an Al Qaeda operative was sent 
to Iraq . . . for help in acquiring poisons and gases,” but the 9/11 Report 
could find no evidence for this. 
 
•         Even though on June 17, 2004 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld stated that 
Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was “not Al Qaeda,” Bush and Cheney continued to 
state that he was.  Early in 2004 CIA chief George Tenet told a Senate committee 
that there was no connection between Zarqawi and Saddam let alone Al Qaeda. 
 
•        The day after the 9/11 report was released Cheney claimed that Zarqawi 
“ran [a] poisons factory in northern Iraq out of Baghdad,” but he should have 
known full well that Zarqawi was not in Baghdad and that this camp was not under 
Saddam’s control. When it was taken over by U. S. troops, captured documents 
revealed no connection to Baghdad.  Zarqawi now heads the main terrorist 
organization in Iraq because of the turmoil of the U.S. invasion, not because 
Saddam invited him there. 
 
•        Before the war the Bush administration kept repeating dire predictions 
of Saddam’s nuclear weapon capacities, but a December, 2002 report of 
International Atomic Energy Association stated that Saddam was telling the truth 
about his own nonexistent weapons program. 
 
•      The Bush administration ignored the fact that the first team of UN 
inspectors destroyed all Iraq’s nuclear facilities that they could find.  Bush 
and Cheney also belittled the second UN team’s report of no new plants, and they 
dismissed Joseph Wilson’s report that Saddam was not buying uranium from Niger. 
 
•       With regard to the aluminum tubes that Saddam had ordered, the Bush 
administration chose to sell the idea that they could be used to centrifuge 
uranium, even though experts advised that their thickness most likely indicated 
that they were to be used for rockets. 
 
•       On December 8, 2002, former U.S. weapons inspector David Albright 
appeared on “60 Minutes”and stated that the aluminum tubes could not be used to 
enrich uranium. He concluded that Bush administration was “selectively picking 
information to bolster a case that the Iraqi nuclear threat was more imminent 
than it is, and in essence, [to] scare people.” 
 
•      On April 20, 2004, Bush promised the American people that he would not 
spy on anyone without a court order, but now we know that his government has 
been wiretapping American citizens since the 9/11 attack. 
In February, 2006, former CIA official Paul R. Pillar, writing for Foreign 
Affairs stated that Iraq "intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions 
that had already been made." 

Bush and Cheney sometimes defend themselves by saying that they are privy to 
information that others don’t have.  At the same time they declare that Congress 
voted for the war on the basis of the same intelligence they had.  They 
obviously cannot have it both ways. We now find is that most of the information 
not shared was contrary to the view that Saddam was a threat to the U.S. 
 
In the fall of 2002 Bush kept telling us that we wanted to avoid a war in Iraq, 
but a July 23, 2002 memo detailing a secret meeting of British officials 
demonstrates that Bush had no desire to go to the UN, or give UN inspectors 
another chance to disarm Hussein.  Here are the crucial passages from this memo: 
“Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the 
conjunction of terrorism and WMDs.  But the intelligence and facts were being 
fixed around the policy.” 
 
There should be no question that the Bush administration did in fact cook the 
intelligence on Iraq.  The result has been an Iraq in far worse shape than 
before, the recruitment of new terrorists and insurgents where none existed 
before, and the unnecessary deaths of 2,100 Americans and tens of thousands of 
Iraqis. 
 
Some Bush supporters have a mantra that goes something like this: “It’s better 
to fight terrorists in Baghdad rather than to fight them in Detroit.”  During 
the Cold War millions of innocent people in the Third World died because both 
sides chose to fight in some else’s country.  When will people in distant 
countries stop dying because of our misguided foreign adventures? 
 
Finally, think of how more secure our country would be if the billions spent in 
Iraq had been used to repair our crumbling infrastructure, protect our ports, 
search air cargo, and secure our nuclear and chemical plants