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Nice article and good work. Much better evidence and writing than I’ve seen out of the rest of the anti-Bush crowd. This may actually stick. (Unlike calls for impeachment on the basis Bush said Saddam and 9/11 were connected.)

I know how they will defend it. They will claim that further intelligence information led them to believe that Iraq did have these abilitie. Thus shunt the blame.

The problem is that we’ve never see that “further intelligence”. We’re always told there is evidence but we never see any remotely convincing proof.

Thomas, thanks for making everything more concise. My only argument is that this should be taken away from Pilger. He’s a smear on an otherwise clean expose of and that’s where the hounds of the apologists will focus. He is irrelevant, and thus should not be mentioned aside from accrediting as the source who found the interview. Don’t quote him directly because it’s suspect given his bias.

Quote the interviews with Powell and Rice. Those are more than enough to prove willful deceit and manipulation.

“And frankly they have worked.” -Powell on Iraq containment, Jan 2001

So Steven, you are saying that you can disconnect this man (pilger) from his actions and obvious ties to leftist groups and his poularity therein?

The credibility is an issue here no matter how much you people say it isn’t. That is what I find amazing….you are actually trying to avoid the credibility of the very man supplying you with your smoking gun. The hate runs deeper than I thought.

“Don’t quote him directly because it’s suspect given his bias.”

-I think that says it all.

pete, you’re right, his own quotes are unreliable in my opinion because of his bias. But that does not excuse the quotes Powell made.

You have proved my point for me that the attack will focus on the messenger instead of the Feb 2001 interview he cites (anything I can’t verify is theory, Powell’s quote is verifiable, the Rice one is not).

Thanks for proving my point.

If this is a big secret, why is it right there on the State DEPT website? I think that the issue here is really intent. By that I mean the intent of this administration. In order for you to prove that this administration had the intent to lie to the American people you had better come up with something better than this stuff.
Of course, if I am wrong then Bush will be impeached. End of story.

I’ve copied the pages and notified the big media folks. If you’re right, they will be pulled or become unavailable, then you’ll probably claim that everything I showed you is a lie. Why don’t you just admit that this is a huge contradiction and 180 change on policy (not conspiracy).

I suppose I should put the string of lies into a flowchart, but you’ll just switch to another argument instead of ceding any ground at all. It is becoming pointless for me to argue anything with someone who is not willing to accept facts and always cites other hypotheticals. You are the one starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist.

—-

The blame could lie on Powell, just as the shady intelligence scandal (yellow-cake anyone?) fell on Tenet. That’s the greater tragedy in my view. There seems to be a lack of accountability in the White House when things don’t go their way, but when the glory train rolls through (e.g. claiming credit for the Do Not Call Registry), Bush makes sure to plant his face on the screen.

Stop making excuses for an administration that runs a PR game that supercedes reality.

I have to agree that the author’s bias does nothing to discredit his argument. His bias may have influenced whether or not he chose to cover the story, but the story itself didn’t change. Powell’s comments are pretty damn clear, and there’s little question to their authenticity when they exist on tape and transcripts are available on the State Dept. web site.

I really hope that the media picks up on this. I think that so much of the debate about why we went to war, etc. is tied up in such complex or convoluted sematics that the general citizenry’s eyes glass over. Hopefully, this will be lound and clear enough for then to sit up and take notice!

You should read the whole statement on the State Dept web site, because Powell contradicts himself, to wit:

QUESTION: (summarized) Minister Moussa, how big a threat is Iraq right now? It seems that the Secretary is trying to have it both ways. Either the country has been diminished by ten years of sanctions or it’s still threat that we have to worry about.

FOREIGN MINISTER MOUSSA: For us, I don’t see that threat, but if you ask the Gulf regions and countries of that area they will they would continue to feel that and they say it publicly. The question is not rhetorical. The question is not to have some headlines. It’s a very serious situation. We will continue to deal with that situation in a way that ensures stability and justice. Therefore, we will have a lot to say after the round of talks …

SECRETARY POWELL: May I just add a p.s. that if I was a Kuwaiti and I heard leaders in Baghdad claiming that Kuwait is still a part of Iraq and it’s going to be included in the flag and the seal, if I knew they were continuing to try to find weapons of mass destruction, I would have no doubt in my mind who those weapons were aimed at. They are being aimed at Arabs, not at the United States or at others. Yes, I think we should…he has to be contained until he realizes the errors of his ways.

Powell didn’t express his own opinion clearly in at least one of these two statements, and I’ve got my theory about which one he really meant just as it was said.

Why didn’t Pilger point out Powell’s contradiction? That’s an exercise for the reader.

Richard: sorry to appear slightly thick, but I can’t see the contradiction between that quote and the one at the top of my post.

“He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”
“If I knew they were continuing to try to find weapons of mass destruction, I would have no doubt in my mind who those weapons were aimed at. They are being aimed at Arabs, not at the United States or at others.”

There’s an if in that second quote; it’s a hypothetical as opposed to a fact. I’m afraid I don’t see the contradiction…

There is no contradiction. The quote you reference merely says that Hussein is “continuing to try to find weapons of mass destruction”. Earlier, Powell said that the sanctions had prevented Hussein’s aforementioned quest from getting anywhere.

“They are being aimed at Arabs, not at the United States or at others.”

If there are no weapons, how can they be aimed at Arabs?

The first quote is also confused and possibly contradictory between the first sentence and the second sentence. If we take the second sentence as a clarification of the first - that Saddam can’t menace his neighbors with “conventional power”, that still leaves open the possibility that he can menace them with “unconventional power”, such as the nerve gas he used on the Kurds and which we know he had.

It seems to me you’re hanging on awful lot on what was probably just a clumsy wording, depending on what the meaning of “significant” is.

Y’all are gonna have to do better than this.

Richard: I think there’s a lot of clumsy wording there, but not least:

“If I knew they were continuing to try to find weapons of mass destruction, I would have no doubt in my mind who those weapons were aimed at. They are being aimed at Arabs, not at the United States or at others.”

Now, that’s odd - he apparently switches from speaking hypothetically to speaking factually. But the ‘if’ and ‘would’ make it clear that the senence was meant hypothetically (substitute ‘were’ for ‘are’ and it makes sense - an easy slip to make. Adding ‘if’ and ‘would’ is not a slip.)

As for the meaning of not having ‘significant capability’ - it could mean anything from ‘nothing we know of, and I’m just covering my back in case’ to ‘he’s got a very small amount, but he’s no threat’. Either way, the quote is just as damning.

And what of Condoleeza Rice’s statement that “We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt”? You can’t get much less ambiguous than that.

Where is the Rice statement from? Is there a source other than Pilger? He’s a lefty and I don’t trust him, I think he got lucky in finding the tape.

Like I said earlier, don’t quote Pilger directly, it will only lead to problems. The Powell quote is legit, but where is the Rice quote from?

Stephen: the quote’s in this article in the Daily Mirror written by Pilger. Alas, I don’t have an earlier source; however, as I’ve mentioned before, the Mirror qualifies as more reputable than simply “quoted by Pilger”.

Richard -

You are infering quite a bit — inferences aren’t usually good reasons to invade countries. If the statements are contradictory and ambiguous as is asserted, that seems to me to be a greater cause for caution, rather than one of proclamation that WMDs were/are in Iraq.

Ooh … there’s the POSSIBILITY that this statement COULD mean that so-and-so MIGHT have WMDs? GET ‘EM!!!

The key word is “significant”. In context, it’s clear that Powell is saying Saddam didn’t have, in his opinion, enough WMDs to launch a conventional attack, but that leaves open the possibility that he had enough, in Powell’s opinion, to supply many, many terrorist attacks.

You can’t parse diplomatic language, which is intentionally ambiguous, as if it were scientific language. It’s a whole different game.

Powell’s saying that he thinks it would be good to see about lifting the sanctions that were so injurious to the Iraqi people. At the end of the day, this was accomplished, by liberating the country from Saddam.

I don’t see a problem with any of this.

It seems we parse Powell’s ambiguity differently, then (which is hardly surprising); to me, yours is a very, very generous parsing.

I’d think having enough WMDs to supply terrorists would count as “significant”.

That would depend on the context, and in this one he’s clearly talking about “conventional force”; that’s what he says, anyway.

Uhh, I’m parsing it by wondering where the WMDs are now?

As Bennett suggests, everything works out in the end because the people are liberated. Regardless of the WMD claims. What’s wrong with that?

Oh that’s right, aggressively invading a country (not retaliation, but preemptive) without the UN security counsel’s blessing is against international law. That’s why we had to have a possible threat of WMDs to present to them. It can’t have a damn thing to do with liberating the people, otherwise Germany liberating Poland becomes a legal thing and Nazi Germany’s aggression is retroactively blessed.

Pesky international laws.

“Conventional” refers to any weapons that are non-nuclear. If Iraq was not posing a conventional threat to its neighbors, was Powell really trying to say that they were posing a nuclear threat? No. He was asserting that Iraq was impotent, thanks to the sanctions. Trying to make his statements more cryptic and “political” than they are is an excercise in futility … just accept them for what they are.

Don’t address the neocon, Swifty. Just let him seethe.

Those of the truth see the truth. Bennett is wrong, Swifty. Offer him a drink and invite him up on the porch to chat.

Thanks, Stephen and Ber; you’re right, I lost sight of the main debate there for a moment. Thanks for managing to pull this debate out from a question of semantics.

“Conventional” refers to any weapons that are non-nuclear.

The statement wasn’t about “conventional” weapons, it was about “conventional forces.” In this juxtaposition, “non-conventional forces” are terrorists.

You’re either with us or against us, after all.

“You’re either with us or against us, after all.”

Simple minded.

Bennett, back it up. Show me the Saddam/terrorism link that was used to justify the war. It doesn’t exist.

It doesn’t exist. The war was based on WMDs (none found), terrorists maybe getting WMDs (no proof of link), and now the backtracking is causing them to use the liberation angle, which falls into the black muck of breaking international law.

Stephen, are you asking me to show you a link between Saddam and terrorism? If that’s the case, I would think that the convicted WTC bomber from ‘93 would do quite nicely.

Or did you want more than that?

This has all been covered before, of course.

I’ll say it again (the one you cited was never used by Bush):

Show me the Saddam/terrorism link that was used to justify the war.

Just go read the SOTU speech, dude - I’m not doing your homework for you.

Richard,

He’s not asking you to do his homework. He’s asking you to back up your statements with facts.

That was a really weak attempt to evade the question.

Let me be clear what you boys are asking: do you want me to prove for you that Saddam supported terrorist groups, or simply that the Administration pointed out that Saddam supported terrorist groups and used that support as part of the rationale for the Liberation?

This will tell me whether you live under a rock or if you’ve actually stopped breathing.

Richard, stop evading the question, which was:

“Show me the Saddam/terrorism link that was used to justify the war.” He’s asking you to back up your statement. Do so.

Your request is ambiguous. If you want to boss people around, Master Scott, they have to know what you want of them.

Now clarify your demand, as I requested, or go away.

Since Richard’s apparently having trouble with a simple question and descending into condescension and veiled insults instead, I’ve closed this comment thread.