Saturday, October 29, 2011

Bush exonerated, but.......not for the LEFT :-)

Larry Elder
The WikiLeaks Vindication of George W. Bush


The WikiLeaks de facto declassification of privileged material makes it case closed: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- and intended to restart his program once the heat was off.

President George W. Bush, in the 2003 State of the Union address, uttered the infamous "16 words": "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Former Ambassador Joe Wilson sprang into action and, in an op-ed piece, in effect wrote, "No, the Cheney administration sent me to investigate the allegation -- and I found it without merit."

Put aside that Wilson's CIA-employed wife, not the evil Vice President Dick Cheney -- as Wilson implied -- sent him on the African errand. Put aside that the British still stand by the intelligence on which Bush made the claim. And put aside that the anti-Bush Washington Post, in an editorial, concluded that Wilson had lied about not finding evidence to support the Iraq-in-Africa-for-uranium claim, since he told the CIA the opposite when he reported back from Africa.

Bush claimed that Iraq sought uranium, specifically "yellowcake." What is yellowcake, and why would its presence or attempted acquisition corroborate the nearly unanimous assumption that Saddam possessed WMD?

The Associated Press called yellowcake "the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment" and said that it "also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment."

"Bush and Iraq: Follow the Yellow Cake Road" headlined a euphoric Time magazine July 2003 piece -- written when the Bush administration began backtracking from the Iraq-sought-uranium-from-Africa claim. Time said no yellowcake equals no WMD equals bogus basis for war.

The article led with this ripper: "Is a fib really a fib if the teller is unaware that he is uttering an untruth? That question appears to be the basis of the White House defense, having now admitted a falsehood in President Bush's claim, in his State of the Union address, that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa."

Time hoisted (the now discredited) Joe Wilson on its shoulders as The Man Who Told the Truth to Power: "Just last weekend, the man sent by the CIA to check out the Niger story broke cover and revealed that he had thoroughly debunked the allegation many months before President Bush repeated it." Never mind that the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Wilson's report "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal" sought by Iraq in Niger.

Let's recap.

Bush, in building the case for war against Iraq, lied to the nation. He falsely claimed that Iraq was attempting to purchase yellowcake from Africa. Time magazine specifically referred to the yellowcake "lie" in accusing Bush of fabricating the case for war. Therefore, were Iraq to have had yellowcake -- an assertion called a "lie" -- it would have confirmed the presence of WMD, giving credence to Bush's declaration of Iraq as a "grave and gathering threat."

But ... there ... was ... yellowcake. This brings us back to WikiLeaks.

Wired magazine's contributing editor Noah Shachtman -- a nonresident fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution -- researched the 400,000 WikiLeaked documents released in October. Here's what he found: "By late 2003, even the Bush White House's staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But WikiLeaks' newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction (emphasis added). ... Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict -- and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."

In 2008, our military shipped out of Iraq -- on 37 flights in 3,500 barrels -- what even The Associated Press called "the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program": 550 metric tons of the supposedly nonexistent yellowcake. The New York Sun editorialized: "The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. ... To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the hands of Saddam ... would have been too big a risk."

Now the mainscream media no longer deem yellowcake -- the WMD Bush supposedly lied about -- a WMD. It was, well, old. It was degraded. It was not what we think of when we think of WMD. Really? Square that with what former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said in April 2004: "There were no weapons of mass destruction." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow goes even further, insisting, against the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that "Saddam Hussein was not pursuing weapons of mass destruction"!

Bush, hammered by the insidious "Bush Lied, People Died" mantra, endured one of the most vicious smears against any president in history. He is owed an apology.

When Hollywood makes "The Vindication of George W. Bush," maybe Sean Penn can play the lead.


Z:  That, I would love to see.

58 comments:

Joe said...

"Bush...endured one of the most vicious smears against any president in history."

Smearing is absolutely the ONLY thing the left does well. They have polished the methodology to a bright shine without using one ounce of truth.

They don't even recognize that there is "truth."

A Pissed Off Irishman said...

Your preaching to the Choir.

Scotty said...

I'm not sure what they meant by saying the yellowcake was old. But I do know that uranium has a half life of something like 4 billion years, or it's 4 million years, I'm not sure and to lazy to look it up right now.

Knowing that, I would have to assume the even the yellowcake would have quite a long shelf life, making the age of it moot.....unless maybe they're talking about, yellow cake. I like mine with chocolate frosting!

Anonymous said...

Yeah...Bush 'vindicated,' LOL! NIce try!

'Smearing" Joe? Really? After how the Bush administration smeared Wilson and Plame you point finders at 'the left?' Give me a break, 'smearing' was the mainstay of the Rovian White House.

nicrap said...

...Isn't there a Gospel According to Judas as well? Just kidding. :)

Ducky's here said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ducky's here said...

It was known that he had a store of yellowcake. Much of the contention over the Niger claim was that he had no need for the ore.

He had no way to process it and he did not have the large uninterruptable power source to refine it.

This links to the false claims of aluminum tubes for centrifuges that Auntie Condo made.

Yellowcake ore is the easiest piece of the nuclear enrichment chain. It doesn't get you far and he already possessed ore he couldn't refine.

Who was making the claims that Hussein was a few months away from a nuclear weapon? Was that Bolton?

Strictly the pure stinky cheese.

Z said...

Scotty, good one :-)

Liberaldude, you never answered my question at another post you'd commented on.
You don't have a liberal blog...why not? Do you just go to Conservative blogs and comment with hate? Are you being paid by anybody, like the lefties who'll be calling Conservative Talk Radio shows about four months before the elections saying "I USED to be a Republican, but I could NEVER vote Republican NOW because..." :-)

Is it lucrative?

Z said...

Ducky, WHAT a relief! YOu come and give us the REAL FACTS :-)
keep pitchin'!

By the way, could you give us the links showing whoever did say that (Bolton or whoever) was irrefutably wrong? Thanks!

Ducky's here said...

U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs

--------------

Weren't Saddams mobile labs of death found to be civilian use stations sold to him by the British?

That whole weapons lab idea was debunked.

elmers brother said...

We did find Sarin laden artillery shells. While I was there we had eight chemical alarms and both our troops and theirs were in MOPP level 4. Part of my platoon were told while working in Karbala that WMD was found and it was made by some of our allies.

Also if you listen to Bush's SOU assess, WMD was only one reason out of many that we went to war with Saddam.

BTW duhkkky was the example of John Wayne's charitableness illustrative enough?

elmers brother said...

SOU address

sue hanes said...

Z - Do your mean that Sean Penn would play George W. Bush in the vindication movie?


Josh Brolin was great in the role of the former president in 'W.'
~~~

I heard on my favorite HBO
Friday night political talk show last night that former President
Bush's approval ratings are up to
47%.

Pris said...

Z, this is a terrific post.

An intelligence analyst such as Valerie Plame, did not then, nor now, have the authority to send her husband on this kind've mission. As we all know she was instrumental in doing just that!

Given that fact, what was behind this facade and the Wilsons' involvement except for political purposes, which is not the job of intelligence work. IMO, their actions were criminal, and were done to discredit George Bush.

The first order of credibility in intelligence work is objectivity. Once a political agenda rears it's ugly head, as it did re the Wilsons, credibility is damaged and puts us all in jeopardy.

Mr. Pris was an intelligence analyst for over 40 years and his dedication made his work highly credible as with others he worked with, because they focused on the truth, and examined their information with integrity.

Politics be damned. If we are to be secure, information must be real, and scrutinized by those who are seeking the truth, and know what they're doing, not how it can be used as a political ploy.

Z said...

Pris, "Given that fact, what was behind this facade and the Wilsons' involvement except for political purposes, which is not the job of intelligence work. IMO, their actions were criminal, and were done to discredit George Bush."

All the discrediting was against Bush and aimed at turning the world against him and us, in my opinion. Remember, I've said many times that the 90% of news Europeans get from here is from The New York Times (Int' Herald Trib, which they read is owned solely now by the Times)...I always laugh when I hear Americans asking why Europe hates us. It's because all they hear is the worst of the worst (plus jealousy)...they propagated the hatred and now they don't like it?
ALl made to discredit Bush, Conservatives, and America's position in the world.

Sue, Penn would never play Bush unless he could play it as the worst guy who lived.
Even Oprah recently said she'd read Bush's book and now understood why we went into Iraq. Penn can't much get away with the HATE BUSH stuff anymore.
47% approval rating: I think those MISS ME YET? bumper stickers for BUsh are getting truer and truer.

ODD...I think of the more than 300,000 Kurds killed (and countless others) by chemicals and wonder why that suddenly didn't represent MASS DESTRUCTION when the Left needed so badly to deify Saddam and annihilate Bush.

Anonymous said...

The only thing I remember reading in Le Monde was that even the French intelligence thought Saddam had WMDs.

And as you know, the French gov was nicely tied to the guy since Elf, one of the major contributors (corruptors) of French parties, was the only corporations to be able to incorporate Iraqi oil as assets in its balance sheet. And France helped Iraq build many chemical plants. A former relative actually worked there and told me one day he wasn't sure of what he had built :(

Z said...

FrogBurger..what happened to the French implication in OIL FOR FOOD?
I read an article from a leftwing media venue that listed that as an accomplishment! :-) (How soon we forget!) and wondered what's happening with that..
did the scandal just suddenly disappear with an uncurious and disinterested media?

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

I haven't followed this very well. But scandals tend to disappear very quickly in France. They disappear b.c the level of corruption is so much higher than the US that both parties help each other in that situation.

In the case of Iraq, the corruption was incredible. Mostly because of the ties of Elf to the French parties.

Pris said...

Z, yes, and now, it's not necessarily hatred, it's a lack of respect, which to my mind, is worse.

I'm sure in many corners of the world, our President is a laughing stock. Weakness and incompetence, go hand in hand.

Strength, on the other hand, is respected, because it has to be, whether anyone likes it or not.

If I had to choose between our being liked or respected, I'd prefer we as a nation, and our leaders, command respect. I think right now, we have neither.

Z said...

Thanks, FB...

Pris, we have neither...respect left when the Left didn't stand up for its president though their own Democrats voted with him.
Obama's campaigning in Berlin and giving insulting gifts to the Queen, etc., did nothing more for us.

I'll be gone for a while..

see you all later.
xx

Ticker said...

Libdud is clueless just like his "messiah".

Damn sure can't read nor comprehend. Obama has the same problem. Must be a obamabot clone.

Libdud sounds(reads) a lot like Craig.Check out some of his old post. hmmmm.
Oh well, both are clueless and never bother to read anything before commenting nor do they add anything to the conversation of value. Time to kick his azz to the curb.

On Yellow Cake. During the original BS with Wilson over such reports came out of Europe as well as Australian papers that the yellow cake was for real. And yes Saddam had facilities in the making to use it. He also had Syria who would have seen that the yellow cake was refined enough for use. Syria is now in possession of Saddam's WMD's and has been since the "disappeared".

Anonymous said...

" As we all know she was instrumental in doing just that!

Didn't she also score a feature as a centerfold in Izvestia or Pravda?

Seems to me she was always on the same level as her Russian counterpart that got shipped back to to Russia?

Ducky's here said...

Elmo, are you referring to the shell that was accidentally detonated causing minor injury to two individuals who were easily treated?

Doesn't sound like mass destruction to me.

Sarin has always been an assassination weapon. The Bulgarians were particularly adept with it during the Cold War.

Ducky's here said...

FrogBurger..what happened to the French implication in OIL FOR FOOD?

-----

Half the world was implicated. Australia, Britain, America ... most of the invasion force.

Ducky's here said...

Syria is now in possession of Saddam's WMD's and has been since the "disappeared".
-----------------
Syria and Iraq are not allies. Now let's go slow for Tocker. Iran and Iraq fought a lengthy costly disastrous war. Syria is pretty much an Iranian client state. Why would Iraq ship anything to Syria?

1. How was the transfer made and why were we asleep? Where are the munitions stored? You don't just keep this stuff in a shed near the garage.

2. If Assad has them why hasn't he given the demonstrators a little taste?

Anyway Tocker, if you can expand beyond a Glenn Beck soundbite we would be appreciative.

Anonymous said...

Ducky, you're at work on Saturday?

elmers brother said...

Duhkkky a drop of sarin is enough to kill you. This shell was loaded with 2 to 3 liters.

How many people would that kill?

elmers brother said...

The former regime had declared all such rounds destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War

elmers brother said...

hey duhkkleberry, how about John Wayne...gonna answer or run and hide again?

elmers brother said...

Sarin has always been an assassination weapon. The Bulgarians were particularly adept with it during the Cold War.

Can you please explain this to the Iraqi Kurds.

Z said...

Ducky "Half the world was implicated. Australia, Britain, America ... most of the invasion force."
WHAT the.........I ASKED FrogBurger, because he's FRENCH, about the FRENCH inclusion in Oil for Food...
Half the world was not implicated, of course.

a minimum of 300,000 Kurds doesn't sound like mass destruction? not 'mass' enough for you? How many times have I asked you that?

Ticker said...

Duckass, never watch or listen to Beck. My infor came from the sources I stated. I can't help that you are so damn stupid that you can't read anything other than Kos or moveon.idiot. Try to do better duckass.

Duckbutt The Syrian ruling party and Saddam Hussein had much in common such as the ideology of Baathism. So UH DUH , they didn't like each other ? Just how stupid are you duckass? Plus a 360+ mile border in common.
Israel intel knows they are there, our intel knows it, Brit intel knows it so duckass looks as if you are the only one who doesn't know it. Try reading something of value instead of fairy tales and nursery rhymes or was all that was offered in your major of underwater basket weaving and finger painting.

Ducky's here said...

No Elmo, I'd rather make you purported chemical engineers look like fools on this thread.

Ducky's here said...

Elmo, sarin has never been delivered as a mass chemical agent.

We'll never know.

Now if it were such a deadly agent and easily deliverable you'd think it would be inserted into an IED or used in a subway bombing or the like.

Now why hasn't that happened? I'm going to guess it is a bitch to deliver in mass quantity and it still hasn't been successfully delivered airborn.

Ducky's here said...

... and sarin is easy to make. You might well have the ingredients in your kitchen.

Yet it hasn't been used in an IED?

Must be more to this chemical weapons thing than the fringe right realizes but Glenn will keep you fired up.

Bob said...

Facts are interesting things. There is only one set, and there seems to be an entire political party trying to change that set of facts. As far as Joe Wilson, a has been diplomat whose career needed a boost, he had two stories to tell.

Let's start with the Bush State of the Union message that British intelligence reported that Saddam Hussein had sent a delegation to buy yellowcake. This statement has never been disproven, expecially with the Brits sticking by their word.

1. Joe Wildon in his op-ed stated that Bush was not correct.

2. Joe Wilson in his report to the CIA gave information that supported the later Bush statement.

3. Valerie Plame, a CIA employee in the same CIA unit that told Bush it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam had WMD was outed by her husband, and later my Armitage, and "Who's Who" where it was stated that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Yeah, she was an agent of the CIA like the Walmart Greeter is an agent for Walmart, and not even as effective.

4. The White House never smeared the Wilsons, they managed to be fools and social climbers all on their own efforts. When the truth comes out, it is tough on liars like the Wilsons.

So, as far as the great Joe Wilson, failed diplomat and columnist, and his wife, ineffective and ignorant CIA agent go, they are fading into history as all pretenders tend to do.

Z said...

"No Elmo, I'd rather make you purported chemical engineers look like fools on this thread."

what a sad little person you are, Ducky

Anonymous said...

Ducky saw the movie with Sean Penn about the Libby story.

Pathetic movie by the way and for once, Penn was terrible in it. Not his fault. The movie sucked 'derriere'.

elmers brother said...

Well duhkky my guess is I've received more training in the military on NBC warfare than you could ever garner from some NYT article. So while I'm know chemical engineer neither are you numbnuts. So now youre denying the Kurds were gassed?

elmers brother said...

No not know

elmers brother said...

Funny duhkky it was used in a subway bombing in Japan an this IED in Iraq. Who said it was easy to make?

elmers brother said...

If by stating that a small amount is enough to kill you insinuated that its easy to make you're denser than I thought

elmers brother said...

Here duhkky

hat is sarin? One of the world’s most dangerous chemical warfare agents. Sarin is an extremely toxic substance that disrupts the nervous system, overstimulating muscles and vital organs. It can be inhaled as a gas or absorbed through the skin. In high doses, sarin suffocates its victims by paralyzing the muscles around their lungs. One hundred milligrams of sarin (about one drop) can kill the average person in a few minutes if he or she’s not given an antidote. Experts say sarin is more than 500 times as toxic as cyanide

Anonymous said...

EB, Ducky thinks sarin is nothing because he used some. His mental faculties have severely declined but he's just not aware of it.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

I have relatives in the Army that assisted with the removal of sarin gas precursors in the form of tons of buried drums of pesticidal chemical concentrates from Iraq. These were chemicals NEVER declared to the UN inspectors (as they remained hidden up until the point the Army unearthed them in 2003-2004).

I really don't care to get into re-litigating the Iraq War with left-wing imbeciles, but any UN resolution violation by Iraq justifies the war completely. Such as above mentioned undeclared chemicals.

The final addendums to the Duelfer Report were recently released.

Guess why the media is ignoring it...

Z said...

Beamish, it hurts me to my core, as an American raised to love this country, to read your post; that things are not revealed because they don't fit the leftwing agenda.

elmers brother said...

Beamish you have any links to that stuff?

Anonymous said...

Lol,I love to watch winguts trying to rewrite history after certain events were debunked. And even Bush agreed.

Z said...

Lib..that's funny. I love to see liberals come here and read the comments and still are too agenda-driven to see the truth.

I keep asking you but you never respond,maybe you haven't seen the question comments yet.... who pays you? Soros? I know that liberals start phoning in talk radio shows months before the elections every single time, saying they WERE Republicans but they could never vote Republican again beCAUSE........... fill in the blank!
You get to recognize the voices so most of us figure somebody's paying them and people like you who have nothing better to do but arrive, not read enough information to make an informed comment, and comment anyway.
Is it lucrative?

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

When American tanks smashed into Baghdad, Saddam had already completed construction of an anthrax production facility, which was a week away from going live. If it had been permitted to go into production, this one facility could have produced ten tons of weaponized anthrax a year. Experts estimate that anthrax spores that infect the skin will kill 50 percent of untreated victims. Inhaled anthrax will kill 100 percent of untreated victims and 50 percent of those receiving immediate treatment. That means that a mere 1 percent of Saddam’s annual production (200 pounds) sprayed by crop-duster over New York City would have killed upwards of three million people.

Anthrax, however, was far from the only WMD Saddam was actively researching and working assiduously to acquire. He also had teams working overtime to create a stockpile of some of the most deadly biological weapons possible. Several years ago, the press had a field day when two suspected mobile bio-labs, presented at the U.N. as evidence of Saddam’s continuing WMD development programs, actually turned out to be weather-balloon stations. That same press, however, then ignored the fact that postwar investigators found five actual mobile bio-labs in and around Baghdad. One of these labs was discovered in a mosque, which had been placed off-limits to prewar U.N. inspectors. Another was found in Baghdad’s Central Public Health Laboratory. One can imagine the anguished cries from the Left if we had bombed what the Iraqis claimed was a public-health facility. Saddam even had a huge bio-warfare production facility masquerading as the Samarra Drug Company. This facility would have been capable of producing up to 10,000 liters of deadly pathogens a year. It was less than a month from going into production when the invasion of Iraq began. If this plant had turned its attention to botulinum toxin, it could have produced enough in a few months to wipe out the world. Again, how would bombing a plant that Saddam would claim was producing life-saving drugs have played in the media?

Investigators also found two labs that appeared to be producing animal vaccines. However, according to investigators, all of the equipment was “dual use . . . and easily diverted to produce smallpox or other pathogenic viruses.” Another nearby lab was busily working on cowpox vaccines, with the exact same equipment necessary to create smallpox. One should note that even a thimbleful of smallpox germs would be enough to kill tens of millions. Smallpox, placed in the hands of a terrorist group and released at a sporting event, would devastate a large swath of the United States. It should be noted that each of these facilities was staffed or often visited by persons previously identified by the U.N. as being associated with Saddam’s pre–Desert Storm WMD programs. One facility, often visited by Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azawi, better known to Western intelligence as Dr. Germ, maintained, according to investigators, a “small” capacity for production of organic agents. When it comes to smallpox, a “small” capacity is all one needs to create global havoc.

Z said...

Beamish, I just have to believe that the liberal nuts can only regard WMDs as NUKES or they don't feel that's "Mass" enough...in an attempt to stick to their guns that Bush was wrong.
This kind of ignorance and agenda could be what's going to kill our country off in the divisiveness it's caused between them and those of us WHO THINK.

Thanks for that information......trust me, they'll never accept ANYTHING that makes Bush not look like a moron.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Well Z, you have to accept that being left-wing comes with a few key prerequisites, the incapacity for rational thought being one of the main ones.

For example, Ducky.

Z said...

you should see him over at Silverfiddle's...you'd enjoy it :-)

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Heh.

Ducky admitted over at my blog that he'd vote for Ron Paul.

Which is as close to him admitting that he's a imbecile as we're going to get.

BB-Idaho said...

If Saddam had em, he would have used em. Now we found out that they were in Libya the whole time....

Z said...

BB, he did use them, on about 300,000 kurds.
Think our media will let the public know about Libya now, the info in your link? (thanks, by the way, interesting info, isn't it)

Beamish...SHUT UP, he DID?
Shows me something very different..

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

All leftists like Ron Paul, Z. Why do you think the Tea Party likes him so much?