Everyone with a brain knows this already, but the much delayed Phase II Senate report proves once again that the President and his lackeys lied us into the Iraq War.
–Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
–Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
–Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
More at the link. These are the sort of policies John McCain seeks to continue and expand. We simply cannot afford a third Bush term.
That’s funny I could swear Bill Clinton and other top heads in his administration also said that Saddam had WMD’s. Of course, I’m a conservative so I’m probably just making that all up. Ooops:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp
Then too since Saddam was such a great guy (when he wasn’t killing thousands of innocent Iraqi’s and literally taking out villages) and a trailblazer in achieving world peace, we probably should’ve just minded our business and stayed out of Iraq in the first place.
I missed the part where President Clinotn invaded Iraq. Oh wait, that never happened.
“That’s funny I could swear Bill Clinton and other top heads in his administration also said that Saddam had WMD’s. Of course, I’m a conservative so I’m probably just making that all up.”
No, that’s not making it up. That’s changing the subject.
The report says:
- The President and Secretary of State suggested that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership. That was false.
- The President and the Vice President indicated that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States. Also false.
- President Bush and Vice President Cheney made statements regarding the political, security, and economic postwar situation that left out all the intelligence community’s warnings about what would really happen.
“…since Saddam was such a great guy (when he wasn’t killing thousands of innocent Iraqi’s and literally taking out villages) and a trailblazer in achieving world peace, we probably should’ve just minded our business and stayed out of Iraq in the first place.”
War or nothing? Those are the only choices you can come up with? “Lack of imagination” is often a problem with the current administration’s worldview. Do you work for the White House?
Wasn’t there a dugger character who flipped out every time someone accused Bush of lying?
That’s funny I could swear Bill Clinton and other top heads in his administration also said that Saddam had WMD’s.
When Bill Clinton was in office, he did. But Iraq was in the process getting rid of them after the Gulf War. never mind the fact that the majority of them had Made in the USA printed on them.
Wasn’t there a dugger character who flipped out every time someone accused Bush of lying?
Good times, good times.
“That’s funny I could swear Bill Clinton and other top heads in his administration also said that Saddam had WMD’s.”
I could also swear that Bill Clinton never advocated literally going to war over that (supposed) fact.
“…we probably should’ve just minded our business and stayed out of Iraq in the first place.”
Take out the “probably” in the above quotation, and you’ve hit a home run!
“That’s funny I could swear Bill Clinton…”
And that’s when we can safely stop listening to you.
You see, Bill Clinton wasn’t the president at the time. You can’t talk about one administration and pretend it is the other. Additionally, the president has access to intelligence that former presidents don’t have. The president has access to intelligence that members of congress don’t have.
“Of course, I’m a conservative so I’m probably just making that all up.”
Well, you are lying if you are trying to claim those quote by Democrats contradict this report. Lying or stupid, which means you are certainly conservative.
My FIL uses the same tactic when he’s losing. Attack Bill Clinton. Wingers have nothing else.
This ‘report’ was nothing but a partisan exercise. Guess who conducted the review? Two staffers from the majority. That’s it. From the report:
“In spite of this disturbing revelation that the Democrats were seeking to politicize deliberately the national security oversight function of the Congress, in an effort toward bipartisan compromise, in February 2004 the Committee agreed to examine ”whether public statements and reports and testimony regarding Iraq by u.s. Government officials made between the GulfWar period and the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom were substantiated by intelligence information” as part of a second phase of the Iraq inquiry. Given what we had already learned, we warned that this could quickly devolve into an unfortunate use of the Committee’s time and resources, but we were willing to agree to the compromise nonetheless, confident that any fair inquiry would show clearly that the statements of administration officials were substantiated by the intelligence available to them at the time, intelligence that, as described in the Committee’s unanimous Phase I report, was flawed. Unfortunately, the report released today confirmed our early suspicions. The Phase II effort has indeed resulted in a partisan exercise and requests made by the Democrats of the then Republican Committee leadership from 2004 to 2006 for the inquiry itself and for unnecessary interviews and documents were clearly intended as roadblocks to prevent the inquiry’s completion and to allow bogus charges of “obstruction” intended to help the Democrats’ political goals.
Ironically, but not surprisingly, even when the Democrats gained control of the Committee and were in a position to take their best shot at fashioning a purely partisan inquiry specifically by instructing only two majority staffers to conduct the review, cutting out the minority entirely, twisting the statements of the policymakers they reviewed, and cherry picking the intelligence that helped best make their case-the reports essentially validate what we have been saying all along: that policymakers’ statements were substantiated by the intelligence. As the Committee’s Phase I report showed, it was the intelligence that was faulty. In the cases in which the majority concluded that statements were not substantiated by intelligence or did not convey fully the intelligence community’s analysis, it is clear that either the words of the policymakers in question or the body of intelligence available at the time were distorted in order to make these false charges.
So what you have is a ‘report’ that:
A. Was prepared entirely by the majority
B. Had no amendments because the majority wouldn’t even allow a vote on 50 proposed ones
C. Had intelligence information cherry picked that would allow the majority to cry out, “THEY LIED!!!”
And of course the drones eat it up.
What undistorted non-cherry picked intelligence is there available to rebuke the phase 2 report?
Jay?
PD100, read the report.
Shorter Jay: Waaaaaaaaaaaaa.
What report are you reading, Jay?
I’m looking at this one right here. It has amendments numbered up to #140 (but apparently not all were included because there are gaps in the numbering sequence) and the text you quote is nowhere to be found.
Also, the report includes “additional views” from both Republican and Democratic members of the committee and is released under the names of the group.
Nevermind. I see it. For some reason, that pdf isn’t searchable. I believe you have misinterpreted Mr. Bond’s remarks re: the amendments. There are amendments attached to the report, but it doesn’t look like the committee voted to decide whether to execute teh amendments in the body of the report.
“This ‘report’ was nothing but a partisan exercise…”
That two of the committee’s GOP members, Chuck Hagel and Olynpia Snowe, endorsed.
But dive into Rockefeller’s report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.
On Iraq’s nuclear weapons program? The president’s statements “were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.”
On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president’s statements “were substantiated by intelligence information.”
On chemical weapons, then? “Substantiated by intelligence information.”
On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.”
Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? “Generally substantiated by available intelligence.”
Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/08/AR2008060801687_pf.html