Right Voices » Saddam Love-Fest

UPDATED: The Levin Report:INQUIRY INTO THE TREATMENT OF DETAINEES IN U.S. CUSTODY..UPDATE: Hoekstra: Capitol Hill a glass house on interrogations

Pam — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:11:49 +0000

Detainee Report Final_April 22 2009.pdf application/pdf Object.

Look how the New Yorker froths over this

UPDATE: Hoekstra: Capitol Hill a glass house on interrogations

Secret U.S. mission hauls uranium from Iraq

Pam — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:30:44 +0000

Last major stockpile from Saddam’s nuclear efforts arrives in Canada

‘Bush Lied’? No, Not Really, According To The…Democrats?

Pam — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:49:24 +0000

The “Bush lied, people died” line doesn’t match what Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee found:

There’s no question that the administration, and particularly Vice President Cheney, spoke with too much certainty at times and failed to anticipate or prepare the American people for the enormous undertaking in Iraq.

But dive into [Sen. Jay] 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.”

As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you’ve mistakenly picked up the minority dissent. But, no, this is the Rockefeller indictment. So, you think, the smoking gun must appear in the section on Bush’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties to terrorism.

But statements regarding Iraq’s support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda “were substantiated by intelligence information.” Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda “were substantiated by the intelligence assessments,” and statements regarding Iraq’s contacts with al-Qaeda “were substantiated by intelligence information.” The report is left to complain about “implications” and statements that “left the impression” that those contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation.

Here is the section relating to the Republicans on the committee:

In the report’s final section, the committee takes issue with Bush’s statements about Saddam Hussein’s intentions and what the future might have held. But was that really a question of misrepresenting intelligence, or was it a question of judgment that politicians are expected to make?

After all, it was not Bush, but Rockefeller, who said in October 2002: “There has been some debate over how ‘imminent’ a threat Iraq poses. I do believe Iraq poses an imminent threat. I also believe after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. . . . To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? I do not think we can.”

Rockefeller was reminded of that statement by the committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), who with three other Republican senators filed a minority dissent that includes many other such statements from Democratic senators who had access to the intelligence reports that Bush read. The dissenters assert that they were cut out of the report’s preparation, allowing for a great deal of skewing and partisanship, but that even so, “the reports essentially validate what we have been saying all along: that policymakers’ statements were substantiated by the intelligence.”

Why does it matter, at this late date? The Rockefeller report will not cause a spike in “Bush Lied” mug sales, and the Bond dissent will not lead anyone to scrape the “Bush Lied” bumper sticker off his or her car.

But the phony “Bush lied” story line distracts from the biggest prewar failure: the fact that so much of the intelligence upon which Bush and Rockefeller and everyone else relied turned out to be tragically, catastrophically wrong.

And it trivializes a double dilemma that President Bill Clinton faced before Bush and that President Obama or McCain may well face after: when to act on a threat in the inevitable absence of perfect intelligence and how to mobilize popular support for such action, if deemed essential for national security, in a democracy that will always, and rightly, be reluctant.

Ed informs us that:

The New York Sun reminds everyone that in January 2003, the State department also had intelligence of ties between AQ and Saddam Hussein, and it came from the same group that dissented on the status of the Iraqi nuclear-weapons program:

His words demolish a talking point for Democrats who still say Al Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq until the coalition of the willing invaded. Mr. Ford wrote that the former emir of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi “has had a good relationship with Iraqi intelligence officials.” He added that intelligence on Qaeda “revealed the presence of safe house facilities in the city as well as the clear intent to remain in Baghdad. Also, foreign NGO workers outside of Iraq who are believed to provide support to al-Qaeda have also expressed their intent to set up shop in Baghdad.”

TheAnchoress

One reads this and thinks:it’s really too bad that when this story of Dems on the Intel Committee plotting against Bush broke in 2003, the mainstream press ignored it, taking umbrage that anyone would leak a memo (!) while ignoring its content. Why, suddenly, is the WaPo deciding, after 5 years of supporting and promoting the “Bush lied” meme, to clarify?

1) Perhaps they see things improving so much in Iraq that there is going to be a slow turning around of the narrative – like turning around the Titanic – so that Democrats can stop pretending they never voted for the action, and get ready to claim a share in victory. Then it gives room to the presumed Democrat president to settle the Iraq matter with an American “presence” in Iraq – comparable to our presences in Germany, and elsewhere – so that he can get on with the business of “changing” America domestically. After all, the WaPo editorial board warned Obama just last week that he needed to update his thinking on Iraq.

2) Perhaps they see that the relentless pounding the press has given Bush for the last 5 years has had enough of an impact for him to have any sort of rehabilitation, either in the polls or in history, and so they figure they can put away the flamethrowers.

3) Perhaps there are still some journalists who are more interested in telling the whole story than in framing and enshrining a narrative.

There Is No Shortage Of Useful Idiots in the Democrat Party

Pam — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:32:02 +0000

Federal prosecutors say Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion.

From a Weekly Standard article at the time:

The controversy ignited on September 29 when Bonior and McDermott appeared from Baghdad on ABC’s “This Week.” Host George Stephanopoulos asked McDermott about his recent comment that “the president of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war.”
McDermott didn’t backpedal at all: “I believe that sometimes they give out misinformation. . . . It would not surprise me if they came out with some information that is not provable, and they, they shift it. First they said it was al-Qaeda, then they said it was weapons of mass destruction. Now they’re going back to and saying it’s al Qaeda again.” When Stephanopoulos pressed McDermott about whether he had any evidence that Bush had lied, the congressman replied, “I think the president would mislead the American people.”
An American official floating unsubstantiated allegations against an American president during a visit to Baghdad would be troubling enough. But McDermott compounded his problem by insisting, despite its twelve years of verifiable prevarication, that the Iraqi regime should be given the benefit of the doubt on inspections and disarmament. Said McDermott on “This Week”: “I think you have to take the Iraqis on their face value.”

Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles, the second-ranking Senate Republican at the time, said the Democrats “sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government.”

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What it means:From The Penagon..Saddam supported at least two al-Qaeda groups

Pam — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:22:04 +0000

Contrary to reports put out by ABC News, in their rush to put something up that wasn’t true or maybe ABC is just that stupid, the documents given to them by the Penagon shows that Saddam Hussein had plenty of ties to all sorts of terrorist groups, including radical Islamist jihadis. Ed explains what you will find in the report.

Saddam WMD Documents Found In Brooklyn Apartment..Espionage?

Pam — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:33:28 +0000

WOW:

How the classified military documents from Iraq, which named the coordinates of where the Army suspected weapons of mass destruction to be hidden, ended up in an Arabic translator’s apartment on Hoyt Street in Brooklyn, is clear.

Not likely to be known anytime soon is what, if anything, the army contractor did with the documents.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, which is prosecuting the case, appears to have little direct evidence that Noureddine Malki passed information on to the insurgency, either during his time in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, or upon his return to America in 2005. But it has raised the possibility that he may have done so. The government has said Malki regularly called phone numbers connected to insurgents and took bribes of at least $11,500 from Sunni tribal leaders.

The government, prosecutors wrote in one court filing, could “establish that the defendant had an opportunity to provide stolen classified information to anti-coalition forces.”

LGF sums it up: “An Arabic translator for the Army has been discovered in possession of classified documents on suspected WMDs, convoy routes, and known terrorists”and is suspected of having passed the information to the enemy”

Lawhawk: “He should get the maximum sentence, and his lawyer is hoping for the judge to be a lenient liberal leftist to agree with time served. I don’t see him getting a light sentence out of this, but anything can happen.”

Democrats are now taking credit for the surge…

Pam — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 03:51:11 +0000

A surge they all opposed!

Are we supposed to just forget that on September 11, 2007, Hillary Clinton stopped short of calling General David Petraeus a liar, whe she told General Petraeus that his progress report on Iraq required “a willing suspension of disbelief?” I’m guessing that to be the case based on this performance on Meet The Press.

Gateway Pundit offers two very important quotes:

Hillary Clinton on October 2, 2002:
“So it is with conviction that I support this resolution as being in the best interest of our nation. A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war. It is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our president.”

Hillary Clinton on February 7, 2007:
“Nearly four years ago our president rushed us into war in Iraq.”

Yet today, this troubled and dishonest politician is bashing antiwar Barak Obama for his stand against the war we are now winning.

Blue Crab Boulevard says that She Was For Defeat Before She Was Against it

Allahpundit figures that Hillary is saying: You’re welcome

Flip has a great roundup

Karl:

If the Iraqi government listens to what she says, they will have noted her shifting positions on troop deployments in Iraq. If the Iraqi government listens to the Democrats, it might certainly push the government to cut a deal with President Bush by July

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Our Press Working With Our Enemy= Loss Of Fallujah

Pam — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:47:09 +0000

According to the Washington Times, the U.S. press played a crutial role in the Marines loss of control in Fallujah back in 2004. What should have been a victory in a military fight, was anything but that:

“The outcome of a purely military contest in Fallujah was always a foregone conclusion ” coalition victory,” read the assessment, prepared by analysts at the U.S. Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center, or NGIC.
“But Fallujah was not simply a military action, it was a political and informational battle. … The effects of media coverage, enemy information operations and the fragility of the political environment conspired to force a halt to U.S. military operations,” concluded the assessment. …

The authors said the press was “crucial to building political pressure to halt military operations,” from the Iraqi government and the Coalition Provisional Authority, which resulted in a “unilateral cease-fire” by U.S. forces on April 9, after just five days of combat operations.

During the negotiations that followed, top Bush administration officials demanded a solution that would not require the Marines to retake the town, according to the assessment.

This is really no surprise to those of us that payed attention to the press. Night after night, channel after channel, we heard the comparisons to Vietnam, our military can’t win, this is a civil war and bring the troops home. The Marines didn’t lose Fallujah, the press did.

Ed:

This is just a repeat of the Peter Arnett story. In the first Gulf War, Arnett famously repeated without any hint of skepticism the notion that the US bombed a baby-milk factory instead of a weapons factory. Years later, Eason Jordan would admit that CNN cooked its reporting to curry favor with Saddam Hussein, and would occasionally just read copy into the camera provided by the Saddam regime as though it was CNN’s own. Rather than treat the Al-Jazeera propaganda with any skepticism at all, the Western media instead regurgitated it while insisting that American military sources could not be trusted to provide honest accounting of the fight.

H/T to Memeorandum

Bill Clinton Returns

Pam — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:09:57 +0000

Much ado about his latest statement in which he says that he opposed the war in Iraq:

During a campaign swing for his wife, former President Bill Clinton said flatly yesterday that he opposed the war in Iraq “from the beginning” ” a statement that is more absolute than his comments before the invasion in March 2003.

Before the invasion, Mr. Clinton did not precisely declare that he opposed the war. A week before military action began, however, he did say that he preferred to give weapons inspections more time and that an invasion was not necessary to topple Saddam Hussein.

At the same time, he also spoke supportively about the 2002 Senate resolution that authorized military action against Iraq.

Advisers to Mr. Clinton said yesterday that he did oppose the war, but that it would have been inappropriate at the time for him, a former president, to oppose ” in a direct, full-throated manner ” the sitting president’s military decision.

That is how I assumed his stance to be and I gave him props for not being an ass. It would have served no useful purpose for him to pull a Carter, and bad mouth the sitting POTUS, just as we were sending the troops in. He didn’t stay quite for long, as he took advantage when the chips were down and things were not going great in Iraq, but that’s Bubba.

Don Surber pointout this 2004 CNN article:

Former President Clinton has revealed that he continues to support President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq but chastised the administration over the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

“I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over,” Clinton said in a Time magazine interview that will hit newsstands Monday, a day before the publication of his book “My Life.”

Don states his feelings and I happen to agree:

My point is not about Hillary trying to renege on her authorization of this war. My point is merely that under another President Clinton we will get more lies by any administration since Josef Stalin passed away.

Had enough?

I think this country can come up with a better field of candidates than Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton..enoughis enough.

Oliver Willis(One of Clinton’s biggest supporters):

That’s just not true. I don’t think its right to put President Clinton in the role of war supporter, but if he was against the war only he and Sen. Clinton know for sure because he didn’t say a thing about it. Maybe, as the article goes on, he was silent due to presidential protocol or to not overshadow Sen. Clinton’s vote and subsequent statements, but President Clinton was noticeably silent as the nation went to war in 2003.

You can easily compare his silence to that of his vice-president, Al Gore, who was vocally and clearly opposed to the war from day one. I wondered at the time – and I still do – why President Clinton sat on his hands when he easily would have had a national platform to nullify Bush’s war policy.

There is no public record of any sort to support President Clinton’s assertion that he “opposed Iraq from the beginning”. That just didn’t happen.

That is a great comparison and Oliver doesn’t mince his words. Let me remind you that there are only 43 people that have held the job that Bush and Clinton do/did…Even fewer have called our military to action. Gore was not one of them.

Bill Clinton did not verbally come out in support of the war, but his silence is being miscontrued as support. If in fact he wanted to support the POTUS, he shouldn’t have made his statements at later dates that did make the news.

My take is that the Clintons are a calculating couple. When Bill’s back was against the wall about Osama and the facts that prove he did nothing to stop the terrorist attacks, out comes his wagging finger and what you can expect to be a lie.. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”. Hillary’s Senate race was pulled from the RFK files…get a seat somewhere so that you can run for the office of President of the United States..

Ed has a really good take on the subject:

The pattern here is really unmistakable. In the early days of the war, Bill had no problem climbing onto the Bush bandwagon, claiming support for the war. Now that it has proven as unpopular as it is, Bill wants to rewrite history and claim that he always opposed it, despite his record of public support. He will say anything to match up with the public sentiment of the moment, showing himself as a man completely without reliable principles.

Amen Ed!

Blair: “They have made their choice and leave us with only one to make – to be forced into retreat or to exhibit even greater determination and belief in standing up for our values than they do in standing up for their’s.”

Pam — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:06:35 +0000

H/T to Allahpundit for this link to Tony Blair’s speech, that he gave in New York City, last night:

Islamist extremism is similar to “rising fascism in the 1920s and 1930s”, Tony Blair said last night in his first major speech since leaving office:
He told the audience, which included New York governor Eliot Spitzer and mayor Michael Bloomberg, that Iran was the biggest exporter of the ideology, and that the Islamic republic was prepared to “back and finance terror” to support it:
“Analogies with the past are never properly accurate, and analogies especially with the rising fascism can be easily misleading but, in pure chronology, I sometimes wonder if we’re not in the 1920s or 1930s again:
He added: “There is a tendency even now, even in some of our own circles, to believe that they are as they are because we have provoked them and if we left them alone they would leave us alone.
“I fear this is mistaken. They have no intention of leaving us alone. “They have made their choice and leave us with only one to make – to be forced into retreat or to exhibit even greater determination and belief in standing up for our values than they do in standing up for their’s.”

AP makes a good point, to those that don’t follow this on the same level that we do, it could leave one rolling their eyes. We, on the otherhand, have been following this closely. We watch as our Democratic leaders, and many of their supporters, attempt to make policy that is in support of our enemy. We watch as they claim that it is U.S. policy that is causing terrorism. War was formally declared on us in 1998. We did not respond until 2001. We paid attention to those peace talks, you know the ones, where there was the shake of the hand for a photo op, but at the same time, the deal had been broken before a hand had been extended. We have watched as citizen’s of this country split into many categories, but three worth highlighting are; 1) those that don’t know we are at war 2) Those that never wanted a war 3) thosethat thought the war would be overin afew weeks

Ted put some comments up that I have watched go without a response. Let me remind all of you of some very important quotes:

This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.

George W. Bush, September 20, 2001

When we invaded Iraq, it is just a battle within this war. It has be proven that Iraq was a supporter of terrorist. In the same speech, President Bush said:

And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

George W. Bush, September 20, 2001

“I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people.”

George W. Bush, September 20, 2001

Tedinthe shed:

In looking at this speech in hindsight, it makes those to object to this war look short sighted and blinder wearing. For these who are against defending ourselves and harp on every mistake made, I hope that someday you will see the folly of the “gotcha” game you’ve been playing.

There are more important things than politics, but 90% of America just seems to not understand that.

It will be our downfall.