Bush did NOT lie

[Giaour]

What the captured documents show

By Mona Charen

Mar 24, 2006

President Bush has made errors, as all humans do, but one thing he has not been guilty of is bad faith. The same cannot be said of his critics.

One thinks of those liberals and Democrats who accused President Bush of "lying" about weapons of mass destruction and about ties between al Qaeda and Iraq particularly now, because last week, after an unaccountable delay of three years, the administration declassified and released thousands of documents captured from Saddam's regime. They offer more proof of what we've already learned from other sources: that Hussein was in collusion with al Qaeda; that he did instruct his people on hiding evidence of WMDs; and that he did support worldwide terror.

Before turning to the documents though it is worth pausing for a moment to dwell on the bad faith of Bush's opponents.

The whole world knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons at least twice: once against the Iranians and once against the Kurds within Iraq. (He had also threatened to use them against Israel.)

The whole world further knew that Saddam engaged in a protracted game of cat and mouse with UN weapons inspectors, first throwing roadblocks in their path and finally expelling them from the country (a violation of the cease-fire agreement that followed the 1991 Gulf War, which required Iraq to account for its weapons and prove that they had been dismantled and destroyed).

The entire world also knew that the U.S. and Britain had not rushed to war with Iraq. To the contrary, the build-up to the 2003 invasion was lengthy and deliberate, giving ample time to the Iraqi dictator to hide or destroy his WMDs.

And yet when coalition forces failed to find caches of weapons, the cry on the left was "Bush lied." It doesn't even make logical sense. Why would Bush want to launch a war on false pretenses? Would he purposely create a political problem for himself? Why? To enrich Halliburton? This is fever swamp talk.

Yet it was heard among leading members of the Democratic Party, not just in the MoveOn.org milieu. Nor was it correct to claim, as so many on the left did, that Bush altered the rationale for war after he failed to find WMDs. In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in February 2003, on the eve of the invasion, the president sketched his vision of a democratic Iraq that he hoped would begin the transformation of the despotic and violent Middle East into something more enlightened and free. He mentioned "disarming" Iraq by force, but it was far from the sole rationale for war.

Three years in, we are hearing from the summer soldiers. The pacification of Iraq is proving more difficult than anticipated. Even some on the right are throwing in the towel. But as The Wall Street Journal wisely editorialized, the consequences of failure -- by which they mean capitulation on our part -- would be utterly catastrophic.

The radical Islamists will claim that they defeated the United States and chased us out of Iraq just as they defeated the Soviets and chased them out of Afghanistan. And every moderate-leaning Arab and Muslim in the world will shrug his shoulders and give up. It will embolden the terrorists tremendously to see the U.S. withdraw from Iraq. The corresponding plunge in morale at home will rival if not exceed post-Vietnam syndrome. Iran will seize the opportunity to impose a Shiite theocracy on Iraq, and Afghanistan will feel the reverberations and tremble on its still shaky foundations.

Oh yes, the documents. One shows that an official from Iraq's government met with Osama bin Laden on Feb. 19, 1995, with the explicit permission of Saddam Hussein. When bin Laden was forced to leave Sudan, the Iraqi documents contain a handwritten note saying, "The relationship with him is still through the Sudanese. We're currently working on activating this relationship through a new channel in light of his current location" (Afghanistan). The notes also reveal that Osama bin Laden suggested "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia.

The documents further disclose that the Iraqi intelligence service issued detailed instructions to directors and managers of weapons sites regarding UN inspections. They were to remove files from computers, "remove correspondence with the atomic energy and military industry departments concerning the prohibited weapons" and "remove prohibited materials and equipment, including documents and catalogs and making sure to clear labs and storages (sic) of any traces of chemical or biological materials that were previously used or stored . . ."

Mona Charen is the author of Do-Gooders and Useful Idiots.

Copyright

[50_Cent's_dog]

I love our president George W. Bush. I believe that he is a man of faith. My only problem with him is how he is dividing Israel. Trying to make a Palestinian state.

[Trinity]

Bump! EVERYONE READ THIS!!!

This is what i have been waiting for years! LOL

[Giaour]

Even with proof, some will refuse to believe.

[Trinity]

Even with proof, some will refuse to believe.

oh.... yeh I have to agree, people are just to blind...

[Marnie]

Even with proof, some will refuse to believe.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I heard this on the news yesterday but you beat me to it!

[other one]

Just remember that this is one persons opinion and she does not document where these documents are or come from. Her opinion is of nore more proven than Mine or Charlie's for that matter.

Don't fall for this kind of thing in deciding what is and is not truth. She is just saying what you want to hear and it lines up with your desires to be true.

This is just one place you might check to get some of the other side of the story. It was written prior to the 2004 election but the information is valid and you all really need to check into it and it's origion.

http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/PNAC-Primer.htm

Sam

[Giaour]

Washington Times

New questions on Saddam, WMD

TODAY'S EDITORIAL

February 20, 2006

More information has surfaced in recent days about Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction programs, and the possible roles of Syria and Russia in spiriting WMD and massive arsenals of conventional munitions out of Iraq prior to the start of the war three years ago.

The new information includes audio recordings of 12 hours of conversations from the early 1990s through 2000 involving Saddam Hussein and his top aides, in which Saddam discusses how to conceal Iraqi weapons programs from U.N. inspectors and the possibility that the United States could be the target of terrorist attacks. The recordings were provided by Bill Tierney, an Arabic speaker, who worked during the mid-1990s for the United Nations Special Commission that was responsible for overseeing Iraq's disarmament.

One new piece of information revealed on the tapes, released Saturday by Mr. Tierney at the Intelligence Summit, a private conference held in Arlington, is that Saddam was actively working on a plan to enrich uranium using a technique known as plasma separation. This is particularly worrisome because of the date of the conversation: It took place in 2000, nearly five years after Iraq's nuclear programs were thought to have stopped.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, according to Mr. Tierney, was the fact that the Iraqi scientists briefing Saddam about the uranium enrichment plan in 2000 "were totally unknown" to U.N. weapons inspectors. The plasma program also appears to have escaped the attention of the Iraq Survey Group, which reported two years ago that it had ended back in the late 1980s.

Mr. Tierney points out that the 12 hours of information that he has translated thus far is just a small fraction of the hundreds of hours of tape recordings and other raw intelligence data collected after the fall of Saddam.

Another speaker at the conference was John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, who charged that Saddam's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were moved by Russian special forces into Syria and Lebanon. According to Mr. Shaw, former Russian intelligence boss Yevgeny Primakov came to Iraq in December 2002 in order to supervise "cleanup" operations to remove WMD production materials from the country. This operation, carried out by GRU military intelligence and Russian "spetsnaz," or special forces, troops, was designed to make it possible for critics of the war to be able to claim that Iraq had had no WMD. Mr. Shaw claims that officials in the Pentagon and the CIA, who were fearful of alienating Moscow, actively worked to discredit his efforts to bring this story to light, and that some derided it as "Israeli disinformation."

It is apparent that the American public has much more to learn about Moscow, Damascus and WMD and precisely when Saddam's nuclear weapons programs actually stopped.

[other one]

You know, it is not possible to discuss these things without getting into the new world order people and that is forbidden..... I think I've just about fulfulled what I was sent here to do in the first place. Enjoy the short time we have as a nation, and I'll see you all on the other side.

Sam

[Gerioke]

You know, it is not possible to discuss these things without getting into the new world order people and that is forbidden..... I think I've just about fulfulled what I was sent here to do in the first place. Enjoy the short time we have as a nation, and I'll see you all on the other side.

Sam

You rock. Do not change.