How Was This Missed?
Okay, waited all day and didn't see anything about this...
From the 16th highest circulated newspaper in the US
The Newark Star Ledger reports this: Bush admits Iraq had no banned arms
Hel-LOOOOOO!!!!!
Text behind the
Bush admits Iraq had no banned arms
He offers new reason for invasion: Saddam subverted oil sanctions
Friday, October 08, 2004
BY SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney conceded yesterday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the debate over the Iraq war to a new issue -- whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing the United Nations' oil-for-food program.
Ridiculing the Bush administration's evolving rationale for war, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry shot back: "You don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact."
"The president of the United States and the vice president of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq," he said at a Colorado campaign appearance.
Cheney brushed aside the central findings of chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles Duelfer -- that Saddam not only had no weapons of mass destruction, he had not made any since 1991 and no longer had the capability to make them -- while Bush unapologetically defended his decision to invade Iraq.
"The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said before flying to campaign events in Wisconsin. "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away."
"He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means, and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction," Bush said.
Duelfer found no formal plan by Saddam to resume WMD production, but the inspector surmised that Saddam intended to do so if U.N. sanctions were lifted. Bush seized upon that inference, using the word "intent" three times in reference to Saddam's plans to resume making weapons.
This week marked the first time that the Bush administration cited abuses in the oil-for-fuel program as an Iraq war rationale. But the strategy holds risks because some of the countries that could be implicated include U.S. allies, such as Poland, Jordan and Egypt. In addition, the United States itself played a significant role in both the creation of the program -- which allowed Saddam, starting in 1996, to sell a limited amount of oil in exchange for humanitarian goods -- and how it was operated and overseen. Congressional investigators are now looking into charges that Saddam paid kickbacks to countries, obtained military goods and enriched his regime through the program.
For his part, Cheney dismissed the significance of Duelfer's central findings, telling supporters in Miami, "The headlines all say 'No weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad.' We already knew that."
The vice president said he found other parts of Duelfer's 1,000-page report "more intriguing," including the finding that Saddam's main goal was the removal of international sanctions.
"As soon as the sanctions were lifted, he had every intention of going back" to his weapons program, Cheney said.
The report underscored that "delay, defer, wait wasn't an option," Cheney said. And at a forum later in Fort Myers, Fla., he said of the oil-for-food program: "The sanctions regime was coming apart at the seams. Saddam perverted that whole thing and generated billions of dollars."
At the same time, Bush and Cheney acknowledged more definitively than before that Saddam did not have the banned weapons that both men had asserted he did -- and had cited as the major justification before attacking Iraq in March 2003.
Bush recently had left the question open. For example, when asked in June whether he thought such weapons had existed in Iraq, Bush said he would "wait until Charlie (Duelfer) gets back with the final report."
Yesterday, the president used the clearest language to date nailing the question shut:
"Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there," Bush said. His words placed the blame on U.S. intelligence agencies.
In late January, Cheney told reporters in Rome: "There's still work to be done to ascertain exactly what's there."
"The jury is still out," he told National Public Radio the same week, when asked whether Iraq had possessed banned weapons.
In recent weeks, however, Cheney glossed over the primary justification for the war, most often by simply not mentioning it.
Duelfer's report was presented to senators and the public Wednesday with less than four weeks left in a fierce presidential campaign dominated by questions about Iraq and the war on terror.
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, visiting New Jersey yesterday, said from Bayonne that it was "amazing" that Cheney would assert that the Duelfer report justifies Bush's decision to go to war. Edwards accused Cheney of "convoluted logic."
Bush and Cheney "are willing to say that left is right, up is down," said Edwards.
A short time later, while campaigning in Wisconsin, Bush angrily responded to Kerry's charge he was seeking to "make up" a reason for war.
"He's claiming I misled America about weapons when he, himself, cited the very same intelligence about Saddam weapons programs as the reason he voted to go to war," Bush said. Citing a lengthy Kerry quote from two years ago on the menace Saddam could pose, Bush said: "Just who's the one trying to mislead the American people?"
Reuters contributed to this report.
X-posted to air_america, al_franken, liberal, lovetheliberals and michaelmoore
From the 16th highest circulated newspaper in the US
The Newark Star Ledger reports this: Bush admits Iraq had no banned arms
Hel-LOOOOOO!!!!!
Text behind the
Bush admits Iraq had no banned arms
He offers new reason for invasion: Saddam subverted oil sanctions
Friday, October 08, 2004
BY SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney conceded yesterday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the debate over the Iraq war to a new issue -- whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing the United Nations' oil-for-food program.
Ridiculing the Bush administration's evolving rationale for war, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry shot back: "You don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact."
"The president of the United States and the vice president of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq," he said at a Colorado campaign appearance.
Cheney brushed aside the central findings of chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles Duelfer -- that Saddam not only had no weapons of mass destruction, he had not made any since 1991 and no longer had the capability to make them -- while Bush unapologetically defended his decision to invade Iraq.
"The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said before flying to campaign events in Wisconsin. "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away."
"He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means, and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction," Bush said.
Duelfer found no formal plan by Saddam to resume WMD production, but the inspector surmised that Saddam intended to do so if U.N. sanctions were lifted. Bush seized upon that inference, using the word "intent" three times in reference to Saddam's plans to resume making weapons.
This week marked the first time that the Bush administration cited abuses in the oil-for-fuel program as an Iraq war rationale. But the strategy holds risks because some of the countries that could be implicated include U.S. allies, such as Poland, Jordan and Egypt. In addition, the United States itself played a significant role in both the creation of the program -- which allowed Saddam, starting in 1996, to sell a limited amount of oil in exchange for humanitarian goods -- and how it was operated and overseen. Congressional investigators are now looking into charges that Saddam paid kickbacks to countries, obtained military goods and enriched his regime through the program.
For his part, Cheney dismissed the significance of Duelfer's central findings, telling supporters in Miami, "The headlines all say 'No weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad.' We already knew that."
The vice president said he found other parts of Duelfer's 1,000-page report "more intriguing," including the finding that Saddam's main goal was the removal of international sanctions.
"As soon as the sanctions were lifted, he had every intention of going back" to his weapons program, Cheney said.
The report underscored that "delay, defer, wait wasn't an option," Cheney said. And at a forum later in Fort Myers, Fla., he said of the oil-for-food program: "The sanctions regime was coming apart at the seams. Saddam perverted that whole thing and generated billions of dollars."
At the same time, Bush and Cheney acknowledged more definitively than before that Saddam did not have the banned weapons that both men had asserted he did -- and had cited as the major justification before attacking Iraq in March 2003.
Bush recently had left the question open. For example, when asked in June whether he thought such weapons had existed in Iraq, Bush said he would "wait until Charlie (Duelfer) gets back with the final report."
Yesterday, the president used the clearest language to date nailing the question shut:
"Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there," Bush said. His words placed the blame on U.S. intelligence agencies.
In late January, Cheney told reporters in Rome: "There's still work to be done to ascertain exactly what's there."
"The jury is still out," he told National Public Radio the same week, when asked whether Iraq had possessed banned weapons.
In recent weeks, however, Cheney glossed over the primary justification for the war, most often by simply not mentioning it.
Duelfer's report was presented to senators and the public Wednesday with less than four weeks left in a fierce presidential campaign dominated by questions about Iraq and the war on terror.
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, visiting New Jersey yesterday, said from Bayonne that it was "amazing" that Cheney would assert that the Duelfer report justifies Bush's decision to go to war. Edwards accused Cheney of "convoluted logic."
Bush and Cheney "are willing to say that left is right, up is down," said Edwards.
A short time later, while campaigning in Wisconsin, Bush angrily responded to Kerry's charge he was seeking to "make up" a reason for war.
"He's claiming I misled America about weapons when he, himself, cited the very same intelligence about Saddam weapons programs as the reason he voted to go to war," Bush said. Citing a lengthy Kerry quote from two years ago on the menace Saddam could pose, Bush said: "Just who's the one trying to mislead the American people?"
Reuters contributed to this report.
X-posted to air_america, al_franken, liberal, lovetheliberals and michaelmoore