Ok, I'm posting this here, which will be a reference point to trying to answer your two questions. I think they will be moving targets that you will spin away from, but I will try. Here is an article that contains kind of a timeline of the situation, and addresses the topic you layed out here. I am not saying that anything in this is true (yet), just want a starting point. There are plenty of things to go from here, to track down and document. So, here goes...
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Bin Ladan Laughing
By EVELYN PRINGLE
The war in Iraq is a miserable failure, any way you look at it. Retired General Anthony Zinni, former commander of the US Central Command, had it right when he said that by manufacturing a false rationale for war, abandoning traditional allies, propping up and trusting Iraqi exiles, and failing to plan for post-war Iraq, Bush has made the US less secure, instead of safer.
Osama himself could not have created the mess that Bush got us into, even if he had tried and he's probably sitting in his cave laughing his fool head off as we speak.
By launching a war against a country that posed no real threat to anyone, Bush not only sabotaged bin Laden's capture, he destroyed our credibility all over the world. As we recently witnessed with Katrina, by over-extending our forces, Bush has lessened our ability to respond to emergencies at home which means we can logically assume that he has lessened our ability to respond to an actual threat of terror should one arise. How Did We End Up With Bush Anyway?
During the 2000 presidential campaign, the Republican platform contained the following statements: * Sending our military on vague, aimless, and endless missions rapidly saps morale. Even the highest morale is eventually undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, inadequate training, and rapidly declining readiness.
* A comprehensive strategy for combating the new dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction must include a variety of other measures to contain and prevent the spread of such weapons. We need the cooperation of friends and allies."
* Nor should the intelligence community be made the scapegoat for political misjudgments.
The Republican prophets who wrote those comments should get a job in a circus because they were able to predict exactly what would happen in the Iraq war under the Bush administration, with its endless missions, back-to-back deployments, inadequate training, poor pay, shortage of equipment, no cooperation of friends and allies, and blaming the CIA for misjudgments, and on and on and on.
We were told us that Iraqis would welcome us and thank us for getting rid of Saddam. Immediately before the war, in a March 16, 2003, interview, Dick Cheney said, "I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators." I am still waiting for someone to tell me why the Iraqis would thank us. Saddam may be gone, but innocent Iraqis have suffered the same human rights violations at the hands of the occupying forces that they did years ago under Saddam. They live in fear of torture every day; in fact more so than when Saddam was in power. Incidents of rape, murder and kidnapping have skyrocketed since we arrived to "save" them. The number of violent deaths went from an average of 14 a month in 2002, to 357 a month in 2003, the year we went to "save" them.
Iraqis still don?t even have the basic necessities that they had with Saddam in power. Water and electricity continue to operate at lower levels than they did before the war. Joblessness is at a record high. Over half the workers in the country are either without a job or working for less than a living wage, due to the fact that the gang of profiteers made sure the reconstruction contracts went to US companies, rather than Iraqi firms. Why would Iraqis thank us? Or the lucky ones that have managed to stay alive that is.
A Year Of Big Lies
In the months leading up to the war, Bush told the world, that the US had to wage a preemptive war against Iraq, not only due to the imminent threat of WMDs, but also because there were links between Saddam and bin Laden. However, the administration has since said that it never claimed that Saddam posed an "imminent" threat, and therefore, Bush cannot be accused of misleading anyone.
How soon they forget. First of all, many officials did use the word ?imminent? and others used words that had the exact same meaning, like "mortal," "urgent," "immediate", "serious and mounting," and "unique." They even went so far as to say that Iraq was actively seeking to "strike the United States with weapons of mass destruction." Yet during a press conference a few months after the war began, when reporters started to question why we were in Iraq, White House spokesman, Scott McClellan said, "Some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'. Those were not words we used." Could that be true? Am I a poor listener? No. It means that either Scott lied, or he has a poor memory, because on February 10, 2003, Scott himself used the "I" word and said, "This is about imminent threat."
He apparently also forgot about the statement made by then, Bush Communications Director, Dan Bartlett, on January 26, 2003, when he said, "Well, of course he is," in response to a reporter's question, "is Saddam an imminent threat to US interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?" Hands down, it is Scott who is the poor listener because he even forgot the comment made by his old boss on May 7, 2003. When then Press Secretary, Ari Fliescher, was asked whether or not Iraq was an ?imminent threat,? he responded, ?Absolutely.? Lets review some of the lies told in speeches and press conferences and cable news shows, to convince Americans and Congress that we had to go to war, beginning with the most masterful liar of all time, Dick Cheney, who said 3 times over a period of only 2 days:
Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies." 1/31/03. Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world." 1/30/03. Iraq "threatens the United States of America." 1/30/03 Before that, on August 29, 2002, Cheney elaborated fully: "Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program," he said.
"These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed," Cheney advised, "so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses." "What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat," he warned, "is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness." According my computer's Thesaures, "mortal" means "deadly." Is that kinda like "imminent?" Lets move on to the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, whose comments were always over the top. On November 14, 2002, Rummy used the ever present fear over 9/11 to sell the war: "I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before?" he asked. "When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat?"
"Now," Rummy said, "transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month ... So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?" he asked reporters. Here?s where Rumsfeld used the nuclear mantra, complete with the now infamous line about Saddam seeking uranium from Africa: "Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Rumsfeld claimed on January 1, 2003.
"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons," Rumsfeld said, "I would not be so certain." There's that pesky "imminent" word again. "And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons," Rummy warned on September 18, 2002. "Iraq has these weapons," he added. Here?s where he claims Saddam is the worst threat on earth. "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq," he said on September 19, 2002.
(Continued in next post...)
