2004-10-03

Iraq's destruction based on aluminum tube lies

Mithras over at Fables of the Reconstruction writes about Bush and the Aluminum Tubes of Death:

The NYTimes.com has 10,000 words on the Bush Administration's telling the public that the aluminum tubes Saddam was buying were for nuclear bomb production. In short, the article says, they lied.

Please go read the article. Make sure you've got a cup of coffee, or maybe a whole pot because it's going to take you a while to get through it. Take your time, read every single word.

Anyone that is thinking of voting for George Bush should read it twice because it outlines very clearly how Bush and Co. lied. Of course the article also shows how the blame should also fall squarely on the heads of Congress, specifically folks such as Sen. John Edwards who was on the intelligence committee. They did a piss poor job of questioning what they were being told. John Kerry as a Senator also did a terrible job of questioning. According to the article:

But in October 2002, when the Senate voted on Iraq, Mr. Kerry had not read the National Intelligence Estimate, but instead had relied on a briefing from Mr. Tenet, a spokeswoman said. "According to the C.I.A.'s report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons," Mr. Kerry said then, explaining his vote. "There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons.

The report cited by Mr. Kerry, an unclassified white paper, said nothing about the tubes debate except that "some" analysts believed the tubes were "probably intended" for conventional arms.

"It is common knowledge that Congress does not have the same access as the executive branch," Brooke Anderson, a Kerry spokeswoman, said yesterday.

Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, served on the Intelligence Committee, which gave him ample opportunity to ask hard questions. But in voting to authorize war, Mr. Edwards expressed no uncertainty about the principal evidence of Mr. Hussein's alleged nuclear program.

"We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons," Mr. Edwards said then.

As I've often said on this blog, the democrats are little better than the republicans in regards to this fucked up war. As recently as last week's debate Kerry continued to maintain that taking out Saddam was the right thing to do. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. It was an act of criminal aggression. Bush lied, Kerry followed. Republicans and Democrats, the two party system is fucking bullshit. It's not democracy. Not even close.

(Via Fables of the reconstruction.)

Edit: Just want to add the following from this article at the Washington Post:

Administration officials at the time did not acknowledge that debate, though Rice acknowledged yesterday she was aware of it. "I knew that there was a dispute," she said. "I actually didn't really know the nature of the dispute."

She didn't know the nature of the dispute? Wouldn't it be her job to become aware of the nature of that dispute?

But, she said, "a policymaker cannot afford to be on the wrong side, underestimating the ability of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein." She said she stood by "the decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein and remove this threat to American security."

Um, what threat?

In July, a bipartisan report by the Senate intelligence committee, which reviewed all of the intelligence on the tubes, said that information available to intelligence analysts "indicated that these tubes were intended to be used for an Iraqi conventional rocket program and not a nuclear program." The report also said that assertions that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program were "not supported by the intelligence."

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security who has written extensively on the tubes, said that Rice "was grasping at straws" to suggest there was still a debate on the issue. He said there was little dispute within the intelligence community now, with the "overwhelming number of experts and the evidence" concluding the Energy Department analysis was correct.

"I think she is being disingenuous, and just departing from any effort to find the truth," Albright added.

Bitch. I don't use that word often... almost never, but fuck, can we please put this lying criminal bitch in jail? Please? How many thousands of people have to die because of these fucking war criminals in the white house? What a joke...