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Old 07-02-04, 02:17 AM   #1
greedy_lars
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Default Not everyone got it wrong on Iraqi WMDs

Not everyone got it wrong on Iraqi WMDs
By SCOTT RITTER

We were all wrong," David Kay, the Bush administration's top weapons sleuth in Iraq, recently told members of Congress after acknowledging that there were probably no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and contradicting President Bush's pre-war claims to the contrary.

Despite the deaths of more than 525 American service members in Iraq, David Kay insisted that the blame for the failure to find the expected weapons lies not with the president and his administration -- which had relentlessly pushed for war -- but rather with the U.S. intelligence community, which had, according to Kay, provided inaccurate assessments.

The Kay remarks appear to be an attempt to spin potentially damaging data in a way that is to the president's political advantage. President Bush's decision to create an "independent commission" to investigate the intelligence failure reinforces this suspicion, since such a commission would only be given the mandate to examine intelligence data, and not the policies and decision-making processes that made use of that data. More disturbing, the proposed commission's findings would be delayed until late fall, after the November 2004 presidential election.

The fact is, regardless of the findings of any commission, not everyone was wrong. I, for one, wasn't, having done my level best to demand facts from the Bush administration to back up its unsustained allegations regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and, failing that, speaking out and writing in as many forums as possible to educate the public in the United States and around the world about the looming danger of war based upon a hyped-up threat.

In this I was not alone. Rolf Ekeus, the former executive chairman of the U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, acknowledged that under his direction, Iraq had been "fundamentally disarmed" as early as 1996. Hans Blix, who headed U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq in the months before the invasion started in March 2003 stated that his inspectors had found no evidence of either WMD or WMD-related programs in Iraq. And officials familiar with Iraq, like Ambassador Joseph Wilson and State Department intelligence analyst Greg Theilmann, exposed the unsubstantiated nature of the Bush administration's claims regarding Iraq's nuclear capability.

There was an answer to the riddle surrounding Iraq's WMD, and there was no need to resort to war. Despite the riddle's composition --consisting as it does of layer upon layer of deceit and obfuscation -- there were enough basic elements of truth and substantive fact about the final disposition of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programs to reveal the answer. Sadly, however, it seems that those assigned the task of solving the riddle had no predisposition to do so.

Moreover, President Bush's decision to limit the scope of any inquiry into intelligence matters is absurd, for it effectively blocks any critique of his administration's use (or abuse) of such intelligence. Remember, his administration was talking of war with Iraq in 2002, long before the director of Central Intelligence Agency prepared a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the defining document on a particular area of the world or specified threat.

According to a classified Department of Defense "after-action report" on Iraq titled "Operation Iraqi Freedom Strategic Lessons Learned," a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Times in September 2003, "President Bush approved the overall war strategy for Iraq in August last year." The specific date cited was Aug. 29, 2002, when Bush approved the goals, objectives and strategy for Iraq. "That was eight months before the first bomb was dropped and six months before he asked the U.N. Security Council for a war mandate that he never received," the Washington Times noted.

The CIA did eventually produce an NIE for Iraq, but only in October 2002, after the president had already decided on war. The very title of the NIE, "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction," is reflective of a predisposition of analysis that was not backed up by either the facts available at the time or the passage of time.

Stu Cohen, a 28-year veteran of the CIA, wrote in a statement published on the CIA Web site on Nov. 28, 2003, that the CIA's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate "judged with high confidence that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles in excess of the 150-kilometer limit imposed by the U.N. Security Council ... these ... judgments were essentially the same conclusions reached by the United Nations and a wide array of intelligence services -- friendly and unfriendly alike."

Stu Cohen noted that the October 2002 Iraq NIE was policy-neutral -- meaning that it did not propose a policy that mitigated for or against going to war with Iraq. He also stated that no one who worked on the NIE had been pressured by the White House to change judgments presented in the NIE.

But Cohen is fundamentally wrong in his assertions. The fact that a major policy decision like war with Iraq was made without the benefit of an NIE is, in and of itself, policy manipulation. Judgments -- even those as poor as the ones reflected in the Iraq NIE -- do not have to be changed to be manipulated. The withholding of judgment through a tardy release of a critical NIE is likewise manipulation.

I worked with Cohen on numerous occasions during that time frame and consider him a reasonable man. So I had to wonder when this intelligence professional, confronted with the totality of the failure of the CIA to accurately assess the threat posed by Iraq's WMD, writes that he was "convinced that no reasonable person could have viewed the totality of the information that the Intelligence Community had at its disposal -- literally millions of pages -- and reached any conclusions or alternative views that were profoundly different from those that we reached."

I consider myself to be a reasonable person. Like Stu Cohen and the intelligence professionals who prepared the October 2002 Iraq NIE, I was intimately familiar with vast quantities of intelligence data, collected from around the world by numerous foreign intelligence services (including the CIA), and on the ground in Iraq by U.N. weapons inspectors, at least up until the time of my resignation from UNSCOM in August 1998. Based on this experience, I was asked by Arms Control Today, the respected journal of the Arms Control Association, to write a piece on the status of disarmament regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

That article, "The Case for Iraq's Qualitative Disarmament," was published in June 2000 and received wide media coverage. The intelligence communities of the United States and Great Britain, however, dismissed its conclusions. But my finding that "because of the work carried out by UNSCOM, it can be fairly stated that Iraq was qualitatively disarmed at the time inspectors were withdrawn in December 1998" was an accurate assessment of the disarmament of Iraq's WMD capabilities, much more so than the CIA's 2002 NIE or any corresponding analysis carried out by British intelligence services.

I am not alone in my analytical differences. Ray McGovern, who heads the nonprofit Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, or VIPS, also takes umbrage at Cohen's "no reasonable person" assertion. "Had Cohen taken the trouble to read the op-eds and other issuances of VIPS members over the past two years," McGovern said recently, he would have seen that "our writings consistently contained conclusions and alternative views that were indeed profoundly different -- even without having had access to what Stu calls the `totality of the information.' And Stu never indicated he thought us not `reasonable' -- at least back when many of us worked with him at CIA."

The fact is, Ray McGovern and I, and the scores of intelligence professionals, retired or still in service, who studied Iraq and its WMD capabilities, are reasonable men. We got it right. The Bush administration, in its rush toward war, ignored our advice and the body of factual data we used, and instead relied on rumor, speculation, exaggeration and falsification to mislead the American people and their elected representatives into supporting a war that is rapidly turning into a quagmire. We knew the truth about Iraq's WMD.

Sadly, no one listened.

Ritter was a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is the author of Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America (Context Books, 2003).


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Old 07-02-04, 11:00 AM   #2
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suppose the white house wouldn't have played the wmd card as justification for war against iraq, will all you liberal fanatics out there stand behind bush if he were to say that saddam must go because of all the atrocities he committed?
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Old 07-02-04, 11:20 AM   #3
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War and justified is kind of an oxymoron.
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Old 07-02-04, 12:40 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally posted by schmooky007
suppose the white house wouldn't have played the wmd card as justification for war against iraq, will all you liberal fanatics out there stand behind bush if he were to say that saddam must go because of all the atrocities he committed?
it's a little late for that discussion but it would've been nice to have been able to have it. this is supposed to be a democracy and an informed one at that. when matters of intelligence are by definition manufactured, controlled and distributed by the state it puts the people in a very difficult position. the truth then becomes critical. bush stands or falls on his honesty, so he said during the campaign (unlike that "last guy" he succeeded). he surely didn't "get elected" solely for his brilliance. bush is now faced with an electorate justly suspicious of his word and his motives. if the case had been so clear initially why didn't he just make it? why didn't he stand behind his new philosphy of preemptive strikes against dictators who are not at present threats to the americans who will pay in purse and blood when he decides the time has come to remove them? surely a man of such strong moral conviction wouldn't lie to america for something so clear as that, and had the people decided that continued containment was justified surely he would've honored thier wishes. or would he?

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Old 07-02-04, 05:46 PM   #5
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Default regarding scott ritter......

CIA Corrupts a Hero

By John LeBoutillier - NewsMax


Several years ago, in the midst of our national nightmare of having the Clintons in the White House, there appeared to be a possible national hero emerging from inside our seemingly corrupt government: Scott Ritter. Ritter was then a U.N. weapons inspector who had been in and out of Iraq monitoring their suspected buildup of weapons of mass destruction. He said it all when he proclaimed one day, "Iraq presents a clear and present danger to international peace and security."

Ritter then detailed the various gruesome weapons Saddam Hussein's scientists were developing: anthrax, botulism, sarin nerve gas, mustard gas - and something called VX substance. He also mentioned Saddam's nuclear program and his ballistic missile program. At the time, Scott Ritter was ridiculed by such paragons of national security as liberal - and admitted plagiarist - Sen. Joseph Biden.

But Ritter held firm - and was regarded by conservatives as a voice of truth in a sea of spin. This former Marine who was then employed by the CIA (and on 'loan' to the U.N.) was a seeming straight shooter.

The Clinton administration clearly was not interested in the truth about Saddam. All they wanted to do was occasionally lob a cruise missile into an old Iraqi radar site and thus earn domestic political points. But nothing was ever done to eradicate Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

Thus, for eight years, Saddam has been rebuilding his arsenal, with the U.S. government making no effort whatsoever to stop it.

Three years ago Ritter warned that "Iraq will be able to reconstitute the entirety of its former nuclear, chemical and ballistic missile delivery system capabilities within a period of six months."

Again, he was ridiculed - and ignored.

Now comes September 11 and our new War on Terrorism. Author Laurie Mylroie has detailed Saddam's involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Khobar Towers bombing, the 1999 embassy bombings in Africa and the 2000 USS Cole attack. In all these cases, she points out, Saddam Hussein 'partnered' with Osama bin Laden's fanatical terrorists. Now comes an American apologist for Saddam who claims Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever. In fact, says this pro-Baghdad American, "Iraq today represents a threat to no one."

Who is this pro-Saddam PR agent? None other than - Scott Ritter! That's right!

The very same man who just three years ago attacked Baghdad, today is Iraq's most outspoken defender.

What happened? How could such a transformation occur? This week's Weekly Standard cover story - "Saddam Hussein's American Apologist" - opines that it is because Ritter is making a documentary about Iraq which is financed by $400,000 from an Iraqi-American man, Shakir al-Khafaji. Ritter acknowledges that the U.S. government does not like his association with this outspoken pro-Baghdad financier. But that does not explain Ritter's conversion in the first place. How could he - in just three years - do a complete 180-degree reversal? Could it be because Ritter is still secretly on the CIA payroll?

Could this be a clever ploy by the CIA to have a 'credible' pro-Baghdad spokesman on their payroll - especially now when Team Bush refuses to implicate Iraq in the September 11 and anthrax attacks?

Having Scott Ritter available to sway otherwise pro-Bush supporters - note that Ritter is a paid Fox News contributor - is worth a lot to a CIA director who is hanging on to his post by the skin of his teeth.

Knowing that former CIA Director and former President George Bush is desperate not to be embarrassed by his refusal to snuff out Saddam's regime 10 years ago, present CIA Director George Tenet will do anything to hang onto power. One way is simple: Use Scott Ritter as a 'front man' to de-link Saddam from his clear record as a perpetrator and supporter of terror.

Years ago a man wise in the ways of Washington once told me, "Once someone is on the CIA payroll, they are always on the CIA payroll."

Scott Ritter may try to look as if he is independent. Don't believe a word of it. Is it possible he is a one-time teller of truth who has been given a new assignment by his CIA case officer to use his almost hero-like status to head off those of us calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein's government?

http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=919
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Old 07-02-04, 07:11 PM   #6
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"Three years ago Ritter warned that ‘Iraq will be able to reconstitute the entirety of its former nuclear, chemical and ballistic missile delivery system capabilities within a period of six months.’ "

from what I know about the words “will be able to” and “reconstitute” ritter’s statement meant saddam didn’t have the weapons at the time.

"Now comes an American apologist for Saddam who claims Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever."

a lot can happen in three years obviously. programs that were funded and poised to resume can wither away. we saw that in the former ussr and kay said as much last week. still i don’t see any actual contradictions between the two statements. “will be able to” make weapons (but doesn’t have weapons yet) and “has no weapons” are essentially synonymous. saying saddam is no threat to anyone is probably engaging in hyperbole but i can’t say for sure what he meant without seeing that quote (and the rest as well) in context.

i'm not sure what the point of the article is beyond engaging in every neurotic neo cons favorite sport of clinton bashing (“national nightmare” lol. he'd kick bush's ass in an election), but if it is was to expose "ritter waffling" the author hasn't made his case. those two inconsistent statements are actually factually consistent.

btw, just how old is that piece?

“Is it possible he is a one-time teller of truth who has been given a new assignment by his CIA case officer to use his almost hero-like status to head off those of us calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein's government?” (almost a hero to who?)

last i heard that particular gov't's out of power.

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Old 07-02-04, 07:38 PM   #7
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it shouldn't matter how old the piece is js. it clearly shows insight into ritters character.

if you compare scott ritter's statements about iraq over time, it is not difficult to conclude that he is simply changing his story to fit his employer/funding source-of-the-moment.
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Old 08-02-04, 02:47 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally posted by JackSpratts
btw, just how old is that piece?



- js.
CIA Corrupts a Hero Monday November 19th 2001
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Old 08-02-04, 03:09 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally posted by JackSpratts
[i] last i heard that particular gov't's out of power.

- js.
Quote:
Originally posted by Wenchie

Monday November 19th 2001
lol
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Old 08-02-04, 05:50 PM   #10
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one more time, for the common-sense impaired...

Quote:
it shouldn't matter how old the piece is js. it clearly shows insight into ritters character.

if you compare scott ritter's statements about iraq over time, it is not difficult to conclude that he is simply changing his story to fit his employer/funding source-of-the-moment.
geez...try reading the article.
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Old 08-02-04, 09:20 PM   #11
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soooo, let's see...according to the Bushies:

Scott Ritter has a defective character....Paul O'Neill is a disgruntled, disgraced insider.....Ambassador Joseph Wilson is a partisan diplomat with an agenda....David Kay is flip-flopping on the truth...and what about Hans Blix?

Quote:
Hans Blix says Blair "dramatized" some Iraq evidence

London-AP -- The former chief U-N weapons inspector says Tony Blair's government "dramatized" its prewar evidence about the threat from Iraq.

Hans Blix tells the B-B-C's "Breakfast with Frost" the British government was dramatizing its claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes -- the same way vendors exaggerate the importance of what they have.

Blix says people expect "more than that" from their leaders in the Western world, specifically "more sincerity."

Blix says Western intelligence agencies were too willing to believe questionable information from Iraqi defectors.

He says there were no weapons of mass destruction when the invasion started.

Now that he's hearing people say "there were laboratories that were suitable" or "there were intentions," he says he'd like to see the "evidence."
http://www.whnt19.com/Global/story.asp?S=1635465

no matter what you think of Ritter's motives, the other weapons inspectors agree with him.
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Old 09-02-04, 11:36 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally posted by theknife
soooo, let's see...according to the Bushies:
Scott Ritter has a defective character....Paul O'Neill is a disgruntled, disgraced insider.....Ambassador Joseph Wilson is a partisan diplomat with an agenda....
correct...and that assessment of fact is not soley "according to the bushies".


regarding david kay, what he said was.....

"We know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam’s WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved.”

he also said....."You have to remember that this view of Iraq was held during the Clinton administration and didn't change in the Bush administration. It is not a political `got you' issue. It is a serious issue of how you could come to the conclusion that is not matched by the future."

and he said.....“I actually think the intelligence community owes the president rather than the president owing the American people."


these quotes regarding his recent assessments in iraq are totally igonored by the left.


you seem to place much emphasis on what "hans blix says". i don't know whether to find that funny or just plain..well...dumb.

his idea of searching for wmds is going door to door asking..do you have any wmds? no, ok then...give me a call if you find one. thanks.


as for scott ritter, he has absolutely zero credibility. not because i say so, but because of his background. do some real research on him.

Last edited by scooobiedooobie : 10-02-04 at 12:30 AM.
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Old 11-02-04, 12:15 AM   #13
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Quote:
Originally posted by theknife

Hans Blix says Blair "dramatized" some Iraq evidence
London-AP -- The former chief U-N weapons inspector says Tony Blair's government "dramatized" its prewar evidence about the threat from Iraq.

Hans Blix tells the B-B-C's "Breakfast with Frost" the British government was dramatizing its claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes -- the same way vendors exaggerate the importance of what they have.

Blix says people expect "more than that" from their leaders in the Western world, specifically "more sincerity."

Blix says Western intelligence agencies were too willing to believe questionable information from Iraqi defectors.

He says there were no weapons of mass destruction when the invasion started.

Now that he's hearing people say "there were laboratories that were suitable" or "there were intentions," he says he'd like to see the "evidence."
seems hans blix has trouble making up his mind....


Exclusive: Blix Backed Bush on WMD

Stewart Stogel, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2004

Documents Show That U.N. Inspector Believed Saddam Was Hiding Secret Weapons.

UNITED NATIONS – U.N. chief Iraq arms inspector Dr. Hans Blix believed that Baghdad may have been hiding as much as 10,000 liters of deadly anthrax before the U.S.- and British-led coalition invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

According to experts, if properly weaponized, that amount of anthrax could neutralize a city the size of New York.

The admission by Blix was found in a private report sent to the UNMOVIC (U.N. Monitoring, Observation and Verification Commission) College of Commissioners just weeks before the invasion. The college is the U.N. body's executive board.

In his report Blix said that he had a "strong suspicion" that Iraq "is hiding" as much as 10,000 liters of the exotic poison.

The private proclamation went further than Blix's public statements where he insisted that weapons Baghdad could not account for was not proof they existed and were hidden.

A senior official at the French foreign ministry in Paris told NewsMax that he was aware of the assertion by Blix and believed it was made "under pressure from Washington."

On Thursday, CIA Director George Tenet told an audience at Georgetown University that his agency's assessment on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was shared by numerous intelligence agencies other than the CIA.

Blix's report would seem to corroborate the Tenet claim.

Former U.N. chief arms inspector Rolf Ekeus had explained that anthrax is one form of WMD that is easily hidden and stored.

"In a spore form you can hide it in a cool cellar and perhaps keep it for as long as 15 years," Ekeus proclaimed.

Ekeus went on to explain that in such a form, anthrax is fairly safe and would be difficult for arms inspectors to track down.

"You can store it in a person's home. How can we search every home in Iraq?" Ekeus once asked.

In his speech, Tenet took exception with the claim made by the United States' recently departed Iraq arms hunter David Kay that the Iraq Survey Group, which has not found WMD, had completed "85 percent" of its work.

Tenet told the Georgetown audience that the Iraq group "has nowhere even close to completing 85 percent of its work."

Kay's successor, former deputy chief U.N. Iraq arms inspector Charles Duelfer, is expected to take up his new duties in Baghdad this week.

Based on statements by Blix and his predecessor Rolf Ekeus, Tenet's claims may be accurate, in a strict technical sense.

Questioned by NewsMax, Blix explained from his home in Stockholm, Sweden:

"We [the U.N.] had strong suspicions that some anthrax was still hidden, but we did not find the evidence to assert its existence."

The U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency (the U.N.'s atomic watchdog) resumed Iraq inspections in December 2003 after a four-year hiatus.

Despite three months of intensive searches, no evidence of exotic weapons surfaced, other than the existence of modified al-Samoud missiles.

The al-Samoud's were found to have violated U.N. sanctions and were being destroyed by Iraq (under U.N. supervision) leading up to the coalition's invasion.

Blix pointed out that all U.N. inspections and arms control operations ceased when the coalition invaded Iraq.

Since then, intelligence from Washington and London to the U.N. has virtually ceased.

Blix retired from his post in July 2003 convinced that the U.N. would not be permitted to resume its inspections under a Security Council mandate.

The future of UNMOVIC has remained in limbo since Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The United States' U.N. ambassador, John Negroponte, told reporters that the future of UNMOVIC "will be revisited at a future date." The ambassador refused to give a time table for the "revisit."


http://www.newsmax.com/archives/arti...9/115035.shtml
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