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"And was it "REALLY" a lie that Bush said Hussein had WMDs?...If Bush firmly beleived it, as Kerry did, due to all the evidence pointed at Hussein having WMDs would that really be him lieing? by definition of the word "lie"?"
you have just proved how blind you really are..
read these comments made by your great leader and tell me, if there is smoke then where is the fire ?? they just went away into thin air ??
"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."
"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have." Radio Address
October 5, 2002
"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."
"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."
"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."
"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" - his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."
Cincinnati, Ohio Speech
October 7, 2002
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."
State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003
The war in Iraq is, apparently, over. In yet another media stunt, Bush hitched a ride on a military jet to proclaim this "fact" from a US carrier. He praised the bravery of the troops he, from the safety of the White House, sent to kill or be killed.
Needless to say, few newspapers reported the obvious irony that this was a man whose connections allowed him to join the Texas Air National Guard in order escape serving his country in Vietnam. Or that it was like saluting the bravery of a bodybuilder who had just pummelled a handicapped person to a bloody pulp.
Yet Bush's photo opportunity serves more than to remind us how obnoxious politicians or that the US elections are approaching (Bush wants to be elected to the office he stole in the 2000 elections). It can be considered a fitting end for a stage-managed war, thrust upon an unwilling world by systematic state lying and media collusion.
The minimum number of Iraqi civilian deaths has now exceeded the maximum number of civilian deaths from September 11th. Let us never forget that America's generals publicly stated that there would be no attempt to count the bodies of the dead left in their troops wake. This exposed the "humanitarian" nature of the war: an Iraqi's life was only of value if Saddam was extinguishing it, otherwise it (literally and figuratively) did not count.
For all the crowing in the pro-war camp, the fact is that this invasion has vindicated the anti-war case. It's easy to see why. The pro-war arguments have been exposed as the lies they obviously were. Rather than a "new Hitler" poised to take over the world, Saddam has been exposed as an evil dictator ruling over a devastated nation by means of a clapped out military machine. And he was picked by the US because they knew it.
Now you seem them...
Let us remember the "official" case for the war, namely Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The stated rationale for the US invasion was that Iraq was a threat to the US, if not the world. We were asked to believe that after a devastating war and a decade of sanctions, US bombing runs, and UN inspections, Iraq still possessed a viable nuclear, chemical or biological threat.
And let us not forget how formidable this threat was. Bush talked about "25,000 litres of anthrax. 38,000 litres of botulinum toxin. 500 tons of sarin, mustard [gas] and VX nerve agent. Several mobile biological weapons labs. An advanced nuclear weapons development program." In October 2002, he said, "We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons." Moreover, Saddam had the means of deploying them, including missiles and tens of thousands of warheads. In March, Vice President Cheney asserted that Saddam "has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Colin Powell claimed at the UN to possess clear evidence that huge stocks of everything from sarin gas to anthrax to sanction-violating missiles were stored in Iraq, ready for use. Blair and his cronies faithfully echoed these claims of the Bush Junta.
... and now you don't
Yet where are these massive stores of weapons now? No weapons have been found. None. Colin Powell said to the United Nations Security Council that "every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." How could these "facts" have proved so elusive to prove now that the US has complete control over Iraq?
Apparently the Iraqis were able to hide or smuggle it all out despite almost constant tactical surveillance and nearly constant satellite and aircraft recognisance. And is there any evidence at all this stuff has been secreted out or hidden? None. It's unfounded speculation based on the lack of evidence. In this, though, Bush and Blair are consistent. As before the war, if no evidence exists then the evidence must have been cleverly hidden or destroyed! Rest assured, David Blunkett will shortly revise the UK courts to operate on these "moral" principles of "guilty until proven innocent" and "no evidence equates to guilt."
None of the "facilities" claimed to exist by the Bush Junta have been found. Can we be surprised? There was no way for Iraq to replace chemical and biological weapons once they did degrade. Chemical weapons require vast industrial infrastructure to make, and another industrial infrastructure to build the means to deliver the chemical agents. Iraq had neither. As was pointed out before the war, even if Hussein had somehow secretly imported the materials necessary to rebuild his WMD within the past five years, even as UN sanctions, no-fly zones and vigorous spying by Western forces remained firmly in place, Iraq could not hide the gases, heat, and gamma radiation which centrifuge facilities emit - and which the intelligence capacities would have identified by now. Plants that make VX, for instance, cannot be hidden, they discharge residual elements into the atmosphere that would have been immediately detectable by the UN teams, or by foreign intelligence establishments watching Iraq like falcons waiting to pounce but their combined resources produced not one piece of evidence.
The argument for Iraq as a nuclear threat was built on even shakier ground. As the US Congress was preparing to vote on authorising the use of force against Iraq, Blair publicly released an apparent bombshell: British intelligence had obtained documents showing that between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had attempted to buy "significant quantities of uranium" from an unnamed African country "despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it." This evidence was important in getting Congress to back the war resolution. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was to verify the authenticity of these important documents for the UN Security Council, but only obtained them from the U.S. government after months of pleading. A strange delay, considering the Bush White House was so eager to prove Saddam's nuclear intentions to a sceptical world. But an unsurprising one, for the IAEA told the UN Security Council that the documents were clearly and obviously fakes. MI6 was regarded by many as the perpetrators. This is the very same agency which Blair asserted would never plant WMD in "liberated" Iraq in order to provide evidence justifying war.
Likewise, the same Iraqi defector who told Powell about the stores of chemical and biological weapons also said they had been completely destroyed. Powell neglected to inform the UN of this.
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