Thursday, December 9, 2010

Bush lied, or did he?

Of course, if you say something you believe, and most others believe, and find out later it is not true, is it a "lie?" No. How could it be?

As Larry Elder reports today, WikiLeaks actually supports the case that Sadam did have yellowcake, intended to restart his nuclear program, and owned huge stockpiles of chemical weapons.
Let's recap.
Bush, in building the case for war against Iraq, lied to the nation. He falsely claimed that Iraq was attempting to purchase yellowcake from Africa. Time magazine specifically referred to the yellowcake "lie" in accusing Bush of fabricating the case for war. Therefore, were Iraq to have had yellowcake -- an assertion called a "lie" -- it would have confirmed the presence of WMD, giving credence to Bush's declaration of Iraq as a "grave and gathering threat."

But ... there ... was ... yellowcake. This brings us back to WikiLeaks.
Wired magazine's contributing editor Noah Shachtman -- a nonresident fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution -- researched the 400,000 WikiLeaked documents released in October. Here's what he found: "By late 2003, even the Bush White House's staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But WikiLeaks' newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction (emphasis added). ... Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict -- and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."

In 2008, our military shipped out of Iraq -- on 37 flights in 3,500 barrels -- what even The Associated Press called "the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program": 550 metric tons of the supposedly nonexistent yellowcake. The New York Sun editorialized: "The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. ... To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the hands of Saddam ... would have been too big a risk."

Now the mainscream media no longer deem yellowcake -- the WMD Bush supposedly lied about -- a WMD. It was, well, old. It was degraded. It was not what we think of when we think of WMD. Really? Square that with what former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said in April 2004: "There were no weapons of mass destruction." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow goes even further, insisting, against the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that "Saddam Hussein was not pursuing weapons of mass destruction"!
Bush, hammered by the insidious "Bush Lied, People Died" mantra, endured one of the most vicious smears against any president in history. He is owed an apology.

Gee! I'll bet even this evidence won't overcome Bush Derangement Syndrome. But facts are facts, even if you don't like them.

10 comments:

Fam Guy said...

HUGE difference between having WMD's, which Bush said they had, and having some old yellowcake. Bush lied and hundreds of thousands of people died, or were wounded. What Rachael Maddow said isn't the question.

Fam Guy said...

You are right about one thing. Still a lot od BDS out there. Bush Denial Syndrome.

Anonymous said...

Would be like charging someone with possessing a firearm if they had some iron ore and a piece of wood.

Steve said...

Not only did Bush lie! These people lied too (of course you'll say they were all listening to Bush, but that would be a lie as well):

I won't add the actual quotes, which you can easily look up, just a date in which the person stated that Saddam had WMDs.

-- Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998

--December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others

--From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002

--National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998

--Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002

--Robert Byrd, October 2002

--Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002

--Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

--Bill Clinton in 1998

--Tom Daschle in 1998

--Al Gore, 2002

--Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002

--John Kerry, October 9, 2002

--Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998

Of course there is British, French and Saudi intelligence services.

Be against or for the invasion of Iraq, but do it for the right reasons, not based on some idiotic left-wing talking point. Unless you like being a baaa baaa sheep, brainwashed by Moveon and their ilk.

Fam Guy said...

ALL of these were after the Bush administration cherry-picked the intelligence and released (including lies) what they wanted, so they could get support for the war they had already planned. Not real hard to see what was going on. If you were a Joe Wilson, with actual knowledge of the area, you were ignored, or worse.

Anonymous said...

All the intelligence infor gets filtered through the top of the food chain, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush, and they decide what they want to share. Note what Colin Powell, a true soldier and patriot, thought of it.

Steve said...

Right. I didn't realize that Bush was president as early as 1998.

Remember the Iraq Liberation Act, signed into law by your boy Clinton in 1998. Here's what he said (guess he's lying too):

Iraq admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability, notably, 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And I might say UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production.... Over the past few months, as [the weapons inspectors] have come closer and closer to rooting out Iraq's remaining nuclear capacity, Saddam has undertaken yet another gambit to thwart their ambitions by imposing debilitating conditions on the inspectors and declaring key sites which have still not been inspected off limits....

This has been fun, but I realize no matter what hard evidence I present, the only thing that can get through your brain is "Bush lied, people died." It's so much simpler that way, huh?

Steve said...

And as for Powell, he had his doubts, but more for the war than the truth of intel. A true patriot and soldier?

Like you are?

Fam Guy said...

You can twist and wiggle, but Bush lied about WMD's that weren't there. He took a thriving economy and killed it, for oil and defense buddies. Will you ever admit reality? Probly not. You're a Texan Repub, that looks past the damage he caused, and can't/won't admit how much he hurt us.

Steve said...

You make me laugh, especially this morning!