This is a MUST READ article from Tom Paine.com:

David Corn Writes:

The DSM and the other British memos, though, are significant and serious for another reason: They prove that Bush's primary case for war—the argument that Saddam Hussein, with his supposed connection to Al Qaeda, posed a direct WMD threat to the United States—was false (if not an outright lie). Moreover, they show that the issue is not bad intelligence—as Bush and his crew have suggested after no WMDs were found in Iraq—but the administration's purposeful misrepresentation of intelligence. This is the main point for DSM fans to make.

The Downing Street memo, for instance, notes that British Foreign Minister Jack Straw believed the WMD case for war was "thin." Presumably, he had access to the leading prewar intelligence, and none of it convinced him. As these documents demonstrate, British officials were indeed worried about Hussein and WMDs, but Straw, according to the minutes of that July 23, 2002, gathering, told Blair that "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." Other British memos go into more detail. A March 22, 2002, memo written for Straw by Peter Ricketts, the political director of the British foreign service, notes, "Even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programmes will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or [chemical weapons/biological weapons] fronts; the programmes are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up." Another memo written by Blair national security aides reported that intelligence on Iraq's WMD was "poor," that Iraq's nuclear weapons program was "effectively frozen," and that its chemical and biological weapons programs have been "hindered."

Compare this to what Dick Cheney said in August 2002: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction….What he wants is time, and more time to husband his resources to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons program, and to gain possession of nuclear weapons." Cheney was conveying the impression that Iraq possessed active WMD programs. There was, he said, "no doubt" about this. The British memos show that Bush's number-one ally had a rather different—perhaps more reality-based—view. And, in retrospect, we know which one was closer to the truth.

Nowadays, Bush-backers like to claim that Bush, Cheney and Co. were led astray by the CIA and its faulty intelligence. But the British memos demonstrate that Bush and Cheney were not duped; they were doing the duping. The Brits looked at the existing intelligence and concluded the material was inconclusive and that Iraq's WMD programs were not strong. Yet the Bush-Cheney administration told the American public the intelligence was rock-solid and that Iraq was crazy with active WMD programs, including a project to develop quickly nuclear weapons. The DSM and the other documents are the evidence that blows apart the bad-intelligence defense embraced by the Bush administration.

Moreover, these records also show Bush was fiddling with the truth when he claimed before the war that Hussein was in league with Al Qaeda. That was a crucial component of Bush's case for the invasion. The argument he made at the time was not that Hussein would be so stupid as to use a biological or chemical weapon against a U.S. target (and risk retaliation that would certainly annihilate his regime) but that Hussein would slip such a weapon to his pals in Al Qaeda. According to these memos, Bush was essentially making this up. Ricketts wrote, "US scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Aaida [sic] is so far frankly unconvincing." Other Blair aides noted there was "no recent evidence" of a link between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden. And Jack Straw wrote to Blair, "there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with [bin Laden] and Al Qaida. Objectively, the threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September."

Notice the silence from the Right on this aspect of the memos?

BBA

We are NOT going away!

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.grupo-utopia.com/blog/mt/mt-tb.cgi/322