MSNBC poll on impeachment disturbing

[edward]

The 1999 Iraqi delegation's visit to Niger is fact and exists separately from the forgeries.

Joseph Wilson proved that the documents showing a uranium sale were forgeries.

Show me where Bush claimed a uranium sale had taken place.

There was never a question about a sale. The Bush claims were all about, "Iraq was seeking to buy".

They cherry picked to the extreme in a desperate attempt to come up with something where nothing existed.

The false information in the sixteen words was damning evidence that Bush and Cheney were hell bent on invading Iraq, and that they misled the American people in doing so.

They should be charged with conspiracy to defraud the American people. And this crime was not a victimless crime.

 

[Futobingoro]

This is not at all the case. At the time of the visit, Iraq was under UN sanctions and was desperately in need of cash. It takes energy to refine uranium, and Iraq had great reserves of portable energy (oil) that could feed the generating plants powering Niger's uranium industry. In return, Niger could help relieve Iraq's cash-flow problem.

So Iraq went to the world's poorest country (surrounded by the oil producing states of Chad, Nigeria, Libya and Algeria) with the intention of selling oil for cash?

You are moving the goalposts. Bush claimed that Iraq had attempted to procure yellowcake from Niger. He did not say that Iraq had bought the yellowcake or that they possessed it, just that they had attempted to buy it. And he had known that even that statement was a lie for months before he made it, which is why he referred to a long-discredited statement from British intelligence instead of real, current, CIA intelligence.

I am only moving the goalposts back to where they should be. Again, the reports of the Iraqi delegation are separate from the forged documents showing a uranium deal. You are assuming that the reports of the Iraqi delegation got shot down along with the forgeries, but this is not the case.

The legal roadblocks that existed and the exposure of uranium contracts as forgeries show only that Iraq was unsuccessful in obtaining uranium, not that Iraq wasn't seeking it.

There was never a question about a sale.

...yet Joseph Wilson thought that his finding that it was "highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place," was grounds to doubt Bush's 16 words. It is highly likely that many people (Wilson included) either thought that Bush had claimed a sale had taken place (he hadn't) or that Wilson's findings shot down both the transaction documents and the reports of the delegation (they didn't).

 

[turbo]

So Iraq went to the world's poorest country (surrounded by the oil producing states of Chad, Nigeria, Libya and Algeria) with the intention of selling oil for cash?

The production of Niger's refined uranium goes to France, with which Iraq had a special relationship. Such a deal would allow France to help Iraq establish some cash-flow that would not be automatically earmarked for humanitarian uses only. The world is a complex place, and the machinations of businessmen and diplomats are no different.

I am only moving the goalposts back to where they should be. Again, the reports of the Iraqi delegation are separate from the forged documents showing a uranium deal. You are assuming that the reports of the Iraqi delegation got shot down along with the forgeries, but this is not the case.

I will spend no more time debating this point. It is a fact that Bush claimed that Iraq had tried to get yellowcake from Niger months after the CIA told him that was untrue. Don't you think that the Bushies made the CIA scramble long and hard to uncover ANY evidence to support the yellowcake story? The fact that they told Bush that the story was untrue months before his speech and still have uncovered no evidence to support the story should be a clear indication that 1) the story was a lie from the beginning or 2) the CIA is incompetent. The CIA has plenty of leeway, and they could have bribed any number of participants in that Iraq/Niger meeting to get Bush's story confirmed. Where is the confirmation? If you think that a diplomat from Niger would not tumble for a few million dollars to back up Bush's case, you have a higher opinion of the honest of governmental officials than most of us.

 

[Futobingoro]

1999

February – Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq’s ambassador to the Vatican, leaves for Niger, according to documents given to the French by Rocco Martino, an agent from Italian military intelligence.¹ Unclear if this is the delegation referenced in Wilson’s findings, or if there was another, separate delegation.

2000

July 6 – Date on document purported to show a uranium transaction between Niger and Iraq (later shown to be a forgery). Document supplied by Rocco Martino.

2002

February – Joseph Wilson is sent to Niger to investigate reports of a uranium sale by Niger to Iraq. Returns having concluded that no sale took place, but noted that an Iraqi delegation visited in June of 1999 speaking of “expanding commercial relations,” which prime minister Mayaki had interpreted as an interest in uranium sales.

2003

January 28 – George Bush delivers his State of the Union address, including the “16 words” in which he claimed that the British government had learned that Saddam Hussein had recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa

July 6 – Date of Joseph Wilson’s NY Times op-ed “What I Didn't Find in Africa,” in which he claimed that his findings in Niger contradicted the claims made by George Bush in January.

[1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20060527...curity/issues/iraq/justify/2004/0802niger.htm

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Tenet denies "slam-dunk" case!

Tenet talks about how one comment, which he made in passing, has haunted him. The comment: "It's a slam-dunk case."

Tenet says he was referring to making a public case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Tenet says he was not saying that the Iraqi leader had those weapons.

..."It's the most despicable thing that ever happened to me," Tenet says. "You don't do this. You don't throw somebody overboard just because it's a deflection."[continued]

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2007/04/george_tenet_to.html

He claims that this was leaked in such a way so as to be misleading and to sound like he said something that he didn't.

You can watch the interview here
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/25/60minutes/main2728375.shtml?source=mostpop_story

heh, note also that he denies using torture, but he refuses to respond to the issue of waterboarding. As Obama noted, this all goes to the definition of torture. Anyone can move the lines and claim no foul.

 

[denverdoc]

I caught the Bill Moyer's documentary last nite, what a great look back! We can argue/pick nits Futo, but if you can sit thru that and tell me this wasn't a propoganda effort of the greatest magnitude with eerie reminiscences of fascism where govt, press and industry work in concert to whip up blood fever. Appalling failure on the part of the press. At least Knight-Ridder was paying attention among the bigger outlets...

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I caught the Bill Moyer's documentary last nite, what a great look back! We can argue/pick nits Futo, but if you can sit thru that and tell me this wasn't a propoganda effort of the greatest magnitude with eerie reminiscences of fascism where govt, press and industry work in concert to whip up blood fever. Appalling failure on the part of the press. At least Knight-Ridder was paying attention among the bigger outlets...

That is a new series. Glad to see Moyers back.

You can watch it here.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

 

[Astronuc]

I caught the Bill Moyer's documentary last nite, what a great look back! We can argue/pick nits Futo, but if you can sit thru that and tell me this wasn't a propoganda effort of the greatest magnitude with eerie reminiscences of fascism where govt, press and industry work in concert to whip up blood fever. Appalling failure on the part of the press. At least Knight-Ridder was paying attention among the bigger outlets...

Moyers mentioned the "smoking gun - mushroom cloud" phrase, which Condi mentioned first, and Bush repeated later.

According to various sources, it was authored by Michael Gerson:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0914-28.htm
by Jeff Cohen

Few media marching bands have beat the Iraq war drums more frantically and with more influence than the editorial pages of the Washington Post. On Monday, the Post announced the hiring of another drummer boy, one who played a key propaganda role inside the Bush White House.

The Post editorial pages were an echo chamber for pre-war distortions and paranoid fantasies originated by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG). So it’s grotesquely fitting that the Post would hire as an op-ed columnist, Michael Gerson, Bush’s top speechwriter who – as a key wordsmith within WHIG – helped originate the flights of rhetorical fancy that so dazzled the Post’s laptop warriors. Gerson spun the deceit; the Post peddled it. Now they’ll operate under the same roof.

In explaining why the Post was adding yet another pro-war voice to its op-ed page, hawkish editorial page editor Fred Hiatt described Gerson as being “a different kind of conservative from the other conservatives on our page.” Thanks, Fred, for all the diversity.

In their new book “Hubris,” Michael Isikoff and David Corn write that it was Gerson who –

* inserted references to the yellowcake-from-Niger tale into various Bush speeches, including the 2003 State of the Union.

* helped prepare Secretary of State Colin Powell’s dishonest and bellicose speech to the U.N.

* conceived Team Bush’s trademark paranoid “soundbite” warning of a potential Iraq nuclear program: “The first sign of a smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud.”

According to “Hubris,” the “mushroom cloud” line was intended for a Bush speech, but was too good to hold. It was first deployed in September 2002 by anonymous White House aides in a New York Times front-page scare story (by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon) warning that Iraq had “stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons.” On CNN that day, Condoleezza Rice declared: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” And Gerson’s line became a standard and manipulative war cry from then on.

Speechwriter Gerson should be right at home at the Washington Post. From September 2002 through February 2003, the Post editorialized 26 times in favor of the Iraq war. As Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman have documented, its op-ed page was also dominated by hawks screaming for war. War skeptics were denounced as “fools” and “liars” and worse – and the skeptics were not given space to respond.

But the truth is that the skeptics were right, were telling the truth, and the “liars” were denouncing the skeptics!

Frank Rich:Iraq Is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac

PRESIDENT BUSH has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo’s end-of-life medical care. Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics. Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he’ll take six weeks to show his face — and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.

But he couldn’t inspire the kind of public acclaim that followed his post-9/11 visit to ground zero or the political comeback that buoyed his predecessor after Oklahoma City. The cancer on the Bush White House, Iraq, is now spreading too fast. The president had barely returned to Washington when the empty hope of the “surge” was hideously mocked by a one-day Baghdad civilian death toll more than five times that of Blacksburg’s. McClatchy (Knight Ridder)Newspapers reported that the death rate for American troops over the past six months was at its all-time high for this war.

"If the Bush administration had been wrong only about the Niger purchase, it would have indicated carelessness. But the references to nuclear weapons, taken as a whole, indicate dissatisfaction with the truth of the matter and a disregard for inconvenient facts."

http://why-war.com/news/2003/08/14/thebushd.html
Peter D. Zimmerman | Washington Post | August 14, 2003

And now -

Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/washington/27intel.html
By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, April 26 — George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

Not that Bush et al were interested in any debate. They had already decided to go to war, and just needed to convince the US public that it was a good idea - hence the propaganda campaign.

 

[turbo]

That is a new series. Glad to see Moyers back.

You can watch it here.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

Thank you for that link, Ivan. I had wanted to watch that show, then forgot about it. I didn't dream that PBS would invest in the bandwidth to put the whole show on streaming video. I highly recommend the show to anybody who believes that our press is liberal or who thinks that the press has been unnecessarily critical of the administration (the Faux News party line).

 

[edward]

I was just thinking, the people who really need to watch this probably will not.

 

[denverdoc]

Someone considered it important, thankfully, and that PBS has not been completely made impotent/irrelevant.

IMO the Bill Moyers, the Knight-Ridder columsists who didn't accept all on faith, and the Amy Goodmans of the world all deserve our richest thanks for having the smarts and guts to lay it out there. Its available still, even if the access is limited vs Fox news which seems to be what's on when I go to the gym or etc. Americans are not stupid, just less informed. Got a spare twenty bucks, send it to an alternative media source. Off my soapbox.

 

[denverdoc]

I was just thinking, the people who really need to watch this probably will not.

Edward, your post came in just as I was completing mine. Thats the issue: the bugaboo of a "liberal press." Make media more independent of advertising $$, it would be a creature of great diversity and life. Used to be we had many fold more newspapers than today, and like Europe even today, brought a great diversity of viewpoint. Today the papers keep merging, even in Denver, the two "opposing" points of view, were merged, and the difference between the two is unnoticeable in content. If we have one voice we have one mind. Support any and all independent news sources!
J

 

[edward]

Someone considered it important, thankfully, and that PBS has not been completely made impotent/irrelevant.

IMO the Bill Moyers, the Knight-Ridder columsists who didn't accept all on faith, and the Amy Goodmans of the world all deserve our richest thanks for having the smarts and guts to lay it out there. Its available still, even if the access is limited vs Fox news which seems to be what's on when I go to the gym or etc. Americans are not stupid, just less informed. Got a spare twenty bucks, send it to an alternative media source. Off my soapbox.

Thanks Doc
there are also a lot of sub links on the right hand side of the main link to the Moyers program for instance:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/timeline.html

There is some interesting information for those who want to delve deeper. In the link above a click on the words "On line only" was very interesting. The links allow one to disect the entire program by time and by people involved.

 

[edward]

Edward, your post came in just as I was completing mine. Thats the issue: the bugaboo of a "liberal press." Make media more independent of advertising $$, it would be a creature of great diversity and life. Used to be we had many fold more newspapers than today, and like Europe even today, brought a great diversity of viewpoint. Today the papers keep merging, even in Denver, the two "opposing" points of view, were merged, and the difference between the two is unnoticeable in content. If we have one voice we have one mind. Support any and all independent news sources!
J

The same thing happened with the two newspapers here in Tucson. The only difference between the two is that one comes out in the morning and the other hits the stands in the afternoon. I truly miss the days of good old fashioned hard investigative journalism.

 

[Astronuc]

Moyers made the comment that newspapers are laying of journalists and simply 'buying' news from other organizations. It costs to much to retain a staff of investigative journalists. This is a very troubling trend.

 

[turbo]

Moyers made the comment that newspapers are laying of journalists and simply 'buying' news from other organizations. It costs to much to retain a staff of investigative journalists. This is a very troubling trend.

And in the Rather segment, it was pointed out that it is much faster and cheaper to bring in "experts" to shout at each other than to actually do any real reporting, which is why TV "journalism" is nose-diving in quality.

 

[Astronuc]

'pundits' rather than "experts".

I believe Moyers's program made the point that the 'experts' who made that case that 'aluminum tubes' were for high speed centrifuges were in fact 'unqualified' to make such an assessment. Typical for the Bush administration.

 

[turbo]

'pundits' rather than "experts".

I believe Moyers's program made the point that the 'experts' who made that case that 'aluminum tubes' were for high speed centrifuges were in fact 'unqualified' to make such an assessment. Typical for the Bush administration.

That's why I put "experts" in quotes. Those people assume a mantle of authority and simply re-assert the arguments of the people they're shilling for without dissecting the situation and laying out the motivations of the principals. In fact, as you point out, many of them lack the qualifications to speak intelligently on the subjects they are expounding on. The real experts (like Scott Ritter) have to look to Amy Goodman and other progressive journalists to get the time and free rein to do the kind of in-depth analysis that complex situations deserve.

 

[edward]

It wasn't just that the reporting was not investigative, it was done by people with no experience in the area and then exploited by the administration.

For instance, the Judith Miller article in the NY Times about the aluminum tubes came about because of a leak from the White House.

Then Cheney appeared on Meet the Press and quoted the Times story as if it was verifying evidence against Iraq.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june04/nytimes_05-26.html#

 

[denverdoc]

Clever bastards aren't they?

 

[Astronuc]

Clever bastards aren't they?

Devious perhaps, or maybe deviant?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Clever bastards aren't they?

Really, I don't think they're very clever at all; more like used car salemen or two-bit con men if you ask me. I think too many people simply aren't paying attention - too much watching S Park instead of the News Hour, listening to the likes of Rush instead of NPR, or watching Fox and believing every word from that some guy yelling at them because he slams the liberals in every other sentence. Most people don't want real news. It's too depressing and they feel powerless.

 

[edward]

If anyone needs a few minutes, well 33 minutes to be exact, of informative comic relief here is a link to the entire Bill Moyers John Stewart interview.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3096410747020563399&q=moyers+John+stewart&hl=en

 

[Astronuc]

If anyone needs a few minutes, well 33 minutes to be exact, of informative comic relief here is a link to the entire Bill Moyers John Stewart interview.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3096410747020563399&q=moyers+John+stewart&hl=en

Thanks, edward! That's great!

"Are you ready to bumble?" I agree with Moyers insight. Tens of thousands of words written by journalists and others on the Gonzo testimony, and Stewart distills it in a few words.

Stewart really has the Bush administration pegged. I appreciate his comment about the disconnect between what Bush says and what he does. Bush stated that the US is in 'the fight for its way of life', a monumental battle, yet he sends 10,000 troops to Baghdad out of 30,000 troops in the 'surge', as if that will do it. And Stewart is right about the administration keeping the nation fearful enough to get away with their current mismanagement of the war, but not so fearful that people stop from their everyday routine and start paying attention to what's really going on.

Moyers and Stewart should both get a Medal of Freedom, but that is not likely from the current regime.

 

[siddharth]

Stewart really has the Bush administration pegged. I appreciate his comment about the disconnect between what Bush says and what he does. Bush stated that the US is in 'the fight for its way of life', a monumental battle, yet he sends 10,000 troops to Baghdad out of 30,000 troops in the 'surge', as if that will do it. And Stewart is right about the administration keeping the nation fearful enough to get away with their current mismanagement of the war, but not so fearful that people stop from their everyday routine and start paying attention to what's really going on.

Moyers and Stewart should both get a Medal of Freedom, but that is not likely from the current regime.

I agree. That's a wonderful interview. It's very interesting to listen to his views on the current Bush administration. I think he's spot on with his observation on the method by which the administration (mal)functions.

 

[denverdoc]

Really, I don't think they're very clever at all; more like used car salemen or two-bit con men if you ask me. I think too many people simply aren't paying attention - too much watching S Park instead of the News Hour, listening to the likes of Rush instead of NPR, or watching Fox and believing every word from that some guy yelling at them because he slams the liberals in every other sentence. Most people don't want real news. It's too depressing and they feel powerless.

I guess I meant clever(devious/deviant) enough to get the drumbeats for war going at a staccato pace, thinking this would all be over long before now, and they would appear to be great champions for freedom, meanwhile having snagged some sweet oil deals, pad their pockets, etc.

Dumb enough to ignore both sound military advice and the abundant lessons of history.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Sure, the fact is though, they took advantage of a vulnerable public during a time when it counted the most. What is not 100% clear to me is whether this was driven primarily by greed, arrogance, delusions of grandeur, or irrational, faith based decisions.

 

[Astronuc]

Sure, the fact is though, they took advantage of a vulnerable public during a time when it counted the most. What is not 100% clear to me is whether this was driven primarily by greed, arrogance, delusions of grandeur, or irrational, faith based decisions.

Try all of the above - greed, arrogance, delusions of grandeur, AND irrational, faith based decisions. All are elements of the Bush administration. Those and a certain amount of depraved indifference.

 

[edward]

Moyers and Stewart should both get a Medal of Freedom, but that is not likely from the current regime.

I will go along with that. It was great to see Moyers back on PBS. I have always believed that he had been pressured to leave in 04 because of his stance against the war and especially after he made the no holds barred statement presented below.

Vice President Cheney, Bill Moyers argued on his PBS show on Friday night, is the “poster boy” for the “military-industrial complex” made up of those who “call for war with all the ferocity of non-combatants and then turn around and feed on the corpse of war.”

http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030421.asp#1

 

[turbo]

Moyers has it right. War brings instability and if you are in control during a period of instability, you can make a LOT of money. The people beating the drum for war almost always stand to profit from it. They wave the flag, point to threats, real or imagined, call for patriotism and solidarity, threaten dissidents, and hope they can fool enough of the public (easily done) to get popular support for slaughter.

 

[Mentz114]

Silver Fox writes ( my emphasis )-

First as several of you point out you think that the Bush administration is full of a bunch of blundering lying dolts that can't figure out the difference between their heads and a hole in the ground. For any administration to pull off the kind of deceit and forgery that is being suggested you would need some very sharp, savvy, and cunning people.

You mean Cheney, Wolfowitz, and their cohorts ? The puppeteers.

As for criminality, one of the charges at the Nuremburg tribunal was 'waging aggressive war' which is still considered a crime against humanity.

 

[turbo]

You mean Cheney, Wolfowitz, and their cohorts ? The puppeteers.

I have a depressing persistent image of Bush as Mortimer Snerd with the ventriloquist (Cheney) talking out the side of his mouth so the audience thinks the dummy is talking. Those of you who are under 50 may have to Google on Mortimer Snerd.

 

[Mentz114]

We have a cartoonist here (UK) who depicts our prime minister as a poodle of a certain simian who rules the USA. But it's hard to laugh while the damage goes on. I've just read through this entire topic and I have a sense of community with those who uphold freedoms, see injustice and deplore ( as Astronuc puts it ) depraved indifference.

 

[Skyhunter]

'pundits' rather than "experts".

I believe Moyers's program made the point that the 'experts' who made that case that 'aluminum tubes' were for high speed centrifuges were in fact 'unqualified' to make such an assessment. Typical for the Bush administration.

As Senator Dick Durbin has recently revealed, now that the information has been declassified:

"The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Wednesday when talking on the Senate floor about the run-up to the Iraq war in 2002.

He cited the White House's claim that Iraq was trying to acquire aluminum tubes needed for a nuclear weapons program -- details of which have since been declassified -- as an example of bad intelligence, saying that there was an ongoing debate within the administration as it was being used in public.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20070427-124842-1706r.htm

The Aluminum tubes in particular had been ruled out as usable for centrifuges by the DOE. I would guess that the "nucular" scientists there would be qualified to make such an assessment.

 

[edward]

One would think that a conspiracy to defraud the Congress and the American people would be illegal.