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a poster wanted motives for Bush's Niger lies... ok

this exchange in another thread, i feel, is important enough for seperate discussion, if anyone cares to dispute, or agree... said poster insists Bush had no reason to lie to the world in his 2003 State of the Union Speech, and countless times soon after.... I disagreed, providing several motives...

Quote:

Originally Posted by poster (Post 320482)

So, if as you say, Bush and Cheney "knew this" -- that there "was no yellow-cake", then WHY did Bush say he believed there *was* an attempt on Saddam's part to obtain it??? Why say such a bold-faced "lie" in front of the whole world?? NOBODY would make such a mistake, unless it was a North Korean, or Soviet, or other communist, who lied through their teeth at every single opportunity.

Sorry, I don't see the motive here.
//

you can't fathom motive? ok, clearly you're either in complete denial, or the very last to know...

so, you're seriously asking that? i am eternally grateful to you for serving up such a slowpitch softball in a fast pitch league... i'll now knock it out of the park for the walkoff win....

Here we go:

- because of the need to thwart the efforts of Congress and the UN to delay the start of the war
- because he was in a race to blow the doors down before the ongoing inspections concluded nothing about WMDs there...
- because of the PNAC; with Paul Wolfowicz whispering his ideology in his and Cheney's ear...
- because of this pathetic quote: "afterall, this is a man who tried to kill my daddy" (another baseless claim)
- because, within hours of hijacked jets careening into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld was ordering his staff to find something that could be used to pin the blame on Iraq.
- because no one was buying Atta in Prague, nor the alluminum tubes
- because the mobile bioweapons lab claims went swirling down the toilet, after David Kay confirmed they had no drains ...
- because he knew his loyal Justice Dept. wouldn't squawk, nor the State Deparment
- because at the last second, he switched and pinned it on British Intelligence reports; which were also in the process of being debunked
- because, according to an NSC staff member, removing the claim would leave the British "flapping in the wind."

and my two favorites:

- because billions of dollars appropriated for Afghanistan were quite secretly diverted to prep for Iraq already, including air fields in Qatar
- because he had an election to win a year later, and painting Iraq as an "imminent threat" would cement the public in fear...

would you like me to continue for all the many reasons he had to lie? or shall we continue on to the next lie he was warned about before his speech, and before Powell's UN speech?

Re: a poster wanted motives for Bush's Niger lies... ok

Quote:

Originally Posted by NEM (Post 320725)

Yeah, but Clinton lied about a blow job. (Just giving you the response you are more than likely to get when they cant debate, or debunk anything)

yeah, but i think, after a lot of schooling, they know not to come with that weak ***** anymore... :rocker:

Re: a poster wanted motives for Bush's Niger lies... ok

The Iraqi did TRY to obtain yellowcake, they were rebuffed by the gov of Niger. If you want documentation do a search on this board the issue was discusssed before you showed up.

Re: a poster wanted motives for Bush's Niger lies... ok

O see that we are still into personal attacks rather than discussing the facts. Oh well some things never change.

Re: a poster wanted motives for Bush's Niger lies... ok

Quote:

Originally Posted by patsfan13 (Post 320826)

The Iraqi did TRY to obtain yellowcake, they were rebuffed by the gov of Niger. If you want documentation do a search on this board the issue was discusssed before you showed up.

that's just plain false... and you're perpetuating a lie.. any time you'd like to discus it further, let's do battle...

and, please don't refer to some past THREAD here as "documentation"...lol

Re: a poster wanted motives for Bush's Niger lies... ok

no no.... i love people like this, actually... i'm actually quite interested in hearing what his source is on the matter.... i'm rather amazed that there is still someone left who's clinging to the fable...

i've done a lot of reading on alledged Niger-Iraq "relationship"... and everything i've read comes to the same conclusion: a few envoys from Iraq may have visited Niger a time or three the past 20 years.... but nothing that suggests, much less confirms, there was any deal to buy uranium, ... that is, besides fraudulent papers forged by a rogue italian agent who made a lot of money on the scam (it was widely known by the world's intel agencies that the U.S. was desperately seeking evidence of ANYTHING they could pin on Iraq, and would pay for the intel) ...

please show us all your source, and please offer it from something a bit more reputable than jebadiahloveswar.org's blog space... i'm willing to capitulate if you have something good on your claim... do you?

Re: a poster wanted motives for Bush's Niger lies... ok

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Re: a poster wanted motives for Bush's Niger lies... ok

Quote:

Originally Posted by PressCoverage (Post 320866)

that's just plain false... and you're perpetuating a lie.. any time you'd like to discus it further, let's do battle...

and, please don't refer to some past THREAD here as "documentation"...lol

I don't feel like replicating the research I did on this subject previously, you can do a search on this forum if you choose, here is a excerpt from wikipedia referencing the Butler report:

Quote:

Butler Report

While some officials in the CIA were skeptical of the Niger documents, President Bush relied mainly on intelligence from Britain for his State of the Union message and used the Niger documents for confirmation. Britain had multiple sources for the intelligence that Iraq sought uranium from both Niger and the Republic of Congo. Here are some conclusions from the Butler Report (which was very critical of other aspects of intelligence findings on WMD in Iraq) found on pages 122-125.[4]

Conclusion 494. There was further and separate intelligence that in 1999 the Iraqi regime had also made inquiries about the purchase of uranium ore in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this case, there was some evidence that by 2002 an agreement for a sale had been reached.

Conclusion 499. We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" was well-founded.

Conclusion 503. From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.
b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.
c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium, and the British Government did not claim this.
d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.

Although sources other than the Niger documents are mentioned, no evidence of this is advanced directly within the Butler Report itself.

Re: a poster wanted motives for Bush's Niger lies... ok

Quote:

Originally Posted by patsfan13 (Post 321079)

I don't feel like replicating the research I did on this subject previously, you can do a search on this forum if you choose, here is a excerpt from wikipedia referencing the Butler report:

absolutely ridiculous... especially the fact that you're referencing the very unofficial wikipedia as your main source... and cherrypicking certain aspects of it, to boot... unfortunately for your claim, you also left this part out:

Quote:

Nuclear expert Norman Dombey has pointed out that the information relied upon by the Butler Review on the Niger issue was incomplete; as he noted, "The Butler report says the claim was credible because an Iraqi diplomat visited Niger in 1999, and almost three-quarters of Niger's exports were uranium. But this is irrelevant, since France controls Niger's uranium mines."(Independent, 25 July 2004). And when asked by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss the conclusions of British intelligence, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John McLaughlin stated, "The one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. We've looked at those reports and we don't think they are very credible. It doesn't diminish our conviction that he's going for nuclear weapons, but I think they reached a little bit on that one point."

also:

"In the run-up to war in Iraq, the British Intelligence Services apparently believed that Iraq had been trying to obtain uranium from Africa; however, no evidence has been passed on to the IAEA apart from the forged documents"

the British claimed (i.e., asserted) that Saddam sought uranium from Africa, but a reasonably critical review of their claims reveals them to be mere assertions (bunk); the evidence makes it clear that the British Government made numerous false or misleading claims in order to peddle their so-called evidence and that their "evidence" was actually alleging that Iraq had bought uranium from Africa.

the fact is, the CIA did not consider the British intel to be credible and they said so repeatedly prior to the Bush 2003 State of the Union (SOTU). INR had always considered the uranium claim to not be credible. So, Bush's SOTU statement was false since he was confidently endorsing a claim that our own intelligence agencies had discarded as not being credible. In other words, if A knew B was peddling something that is not credible and therefore discarded B's claims, for A to later claim that we trust B because B trusts itself is the height of dishonesty. Either you trust B or you don't. Both cannot simultaneously be true.

It is also instructive to note something that the U.S. SSCI Report and the British Butler Report deliberately hid from the public. Around the time of Bush's SOTU speech and immediately prior to Colin Powell's Feb 2003 speech to the UN that occurred shortly after Bush's SOTU speech, the CIA communicated with the British regarding the uranium claim and based on the information exchanged, Colin Powell did not find the uranium allegation to be credible. This is significant for many reasons but particularly so because it was the only (fake) defense that the Bushies were left with.

I'll have MUCH more on this later.... Fact is, the Butler Report, and the preceeding Hutton Report have been completely obliterated... And only the staunchest deniers and war defenders are still holding to the vague claim that Iraq ever sought uranium from Niger, or anywhere in Central Africa...

Nice try, however...

Re: a poster wanted motives for Bush's Niger lies... ok

Some more from Hitchens in Slate magazine about the fraud and his wife (Wilson) and the Iraqi attampts to obtain yellowcake from Niger.

http://www.slate.com/id/2146475/

Quote:

n a series of columns, I have argued that the answer to this is "yes," and that British intelligence was right to inform Washington to that effect. Iraq—despite having yellowcake of its own—had bought the material from Niger as early as 1981 and had not at that time informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (weapons inspectors effectively stopped Iraq's domestic yellowcake production after 1991). On Oct. 31, 1998, Iraq announced the end of its cooperation with the U.N. inspectors, who were effectively barred from the country. A few days later, the U.N. Security Council condemned this move in Resolution 1205, dated Nov. 5, 1998. The following month, the Clinton administration ordered selective strikes in and around Baghdad. A few weeks after that—on Feb. 8, 1999, to be precise—an Iraqi delegation visited Niger. It was headed by the improbable figure of Saddam Hussein's ambassador to the Vatican. But the improbability becomes more intelligible when it is understood that this diplomat, Wissam al-Zahawie by name, was a very experienced Iraqi envoy for nuclear-related matters.

I shall quote here, with his permission, from a letter I have received from Ambassador Rolf Ekeus. Ambassador Ekeus, currently high commissioner for national minority questions for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, is a founder of the renowned Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, has been Sweden's envoy both to the United Nations and the United States, and won great acclaim for his effective defanging of Iraq when he was the first chairman of UNSCOM after the first Gulf War in 1992. (When it was proposed 10 years later that the U.N. inspectors be sent back to Iraq, Kofi Annan actually renominated Ekeus for the job but was overruled by France and Russia, who wanted the more conciliatory Hans Blix.) Ekeus writes to me as follows, having known Zahawie in a professional capacity and having read the posting, apparently from him, in Slate's "Fray":

One of my colleagues remembers Zahawie as Iraq's delegate to the IAEA General Conference during the years 1982-84. One item on the agenda was the diplomatic and political fall-out of Israel's destruction of the Osirak reactor (a centerpiece of Iraq's nuclear weapons ambitions). Zahawie in his response [to Slate] appears to confirm that he was Iraq's delegate, though not the Permanent delegate, to the IAEA (the General Conference) and therefore clearly not foreign to the nuclear issues, especially as he was the under-secretary of the foreign ministry selected by Baghdad to represent Iraq on the most sensitive issue, the question of Iraq's nuclear weapons ambitions. His participation as leader of the Iraqi delegation to the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference merely confirms his standing as Iraq's top negotiator on nuclear weapons issues. [italics mine]

He confirms that he was Iraq's ambassador to the Vatican, a not unimportant position given that all Iraq's [other] embassies in the West lacked senior or ambassadorial leadership and that all Western embassies in Iraq were closed. His modesty in this case is puzzling if you don't take into account that a resident ambassador in Rome was ideally placed to undertake discreet and sensitive missions, especially as he was fully plugged into the intricacies of nuclear-weapons diplomacy.

Zahawie furthermore confirms his trip to Niger. The question remains, why Iraq's top man on nuclear weapons diplomacy and negotiations would travel to Niger: with all respect, not the dream-place for a connoisseur of Mozart and Italian bel canto, though no longer of Wagner.

BTW I urge the reader to go to the link for the Hitchens column. There are a ton of embedded links to further information supporting his thesis.