4 posts tagged “iraq war”
Ahhhh, finally a Democrat who will not shirk from fighting with the republicans on national security issues! Not only that, but in Barack, we have someone who can simply and eloquently state the truth... and with that a devastating and damning argument...
Barack Obama continues hitting back hard today at the false McCain/GOP assaults on him for allegedly seeing terrorism as only a law-enforcement problem...
"I refuse to be lectured on national security by people who are responsible for the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States. The other side likes to use 9/11 as a political bludgeon. Well, let's talk about 9/11.
"The people who were responsible for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have not been brought to justice. They are Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their sponsors -- the Taliban. They were in Afghanistan. And yet George Bush and John McCain decided in 2002 that we should take our eye off of Afghanistan so that we could invade and occupy a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. The case for war in Iraq was so thin that George Bush and John McCain had to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein, and make false promises that we'd be greeted as liberators. They misled the American people, and took us into a misguided war.
"Here are the results of their policy. Osama bin Laden and his top leadership -- the people who murdered 3000 Americans -- have a safe-haven in northwest Pakistan, where they operate with such freedom of action that they can still put out hate-filled audiotapes to the outside world. That's the result of the Bush-McCain approach to the war on terrorism."
Some of us knew this all along... but now finally, it is confirmed. So my only question is why this didn't come out before the last election???
Senate committee: Bush knew Iraq claims weren't true
WASHINGTON— A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.
A companion report found that a special office set up by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld undertook "sensitive intelligence activities" that were inappropriate "without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department."
“Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” said committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D- W. Va.
It's long been known that the administration's claims in the runup to the Iraq war, from Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al Qaida to whether Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, were incorrect, and White House spokeswoman Dana Perino suggested the problems were faulty intelligence.
"We had the intelligence that we had fully vetted, but it was wrong," she said. "We certainly regret that and we've taken measures to fix it."
But the Senate report, the first official examination of whether the president and vice president knew that their claims were incorrect at the time that they made them, reached a different conclusion.
“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate," Rockefeller said in a statement.
But Rockefeller called the administration’s statements delibrate, writing: "There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate."
You have got to read this front page story in the NY Times today. This just borders on farce, if it wasn't the Bush administration, I wouldn't believe that it was true... but sadly, it is only too true. I can tell you, the Joseph Heller's of the future will have no shortage of material to write the 21st century Catch-22...
How does a 22 year-old get a $300 million defense contract to supply arms to the Afghan army? First, make sure you're not zinged with a felony when police find your fake ID. Then hire a licensed masseur to be your VP. Find some shady arms dealers, make the lowest bid and voila -- you're in business with the Bush administration.
As the Times found out, AEY fulfilled that contract by dealing with a variety of shady arms dealers (one Czech, one Swiss) to get their hands on ammo stockpiles in the old Eastern bloc. And as far as ensuring the quality of the munitions? Here's how it went in Albania:
Albania offered to sell tens of millions of cartridges manufactured as long ago as 1950. For tests, a 25-year-old AEY representative was given 1,000 cartridges to fire, according to Ylli Pinari, the director of the arms export agency at the time of the sale.
No ballistic performance was recorded, he said. The rounds were fired by hand.
Not surprisingly, the Afghan army has been unhappy with the product. AEY shipped the decades-old ammo in cardboard boxes -- apparently to save money on shipping charges. And the Times reports that the boxes arrived in Afghanistan spilling out of the boxes, "revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966." It's illegal to deal in Chinese arms.
[T]he company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.
It just keeps getting better though... the story goes into the dude's the 22 year-old CEO's personal life, and it is just insane. He was under 21 when he started defense contracting, and was going out with a fake ID, and was caught. He only avoided a felony charge for fraud by doing a diversion program. It should be noted that the felony conviction would have made him ineligible to contract with the Defense department. He was also involved in numerous domestic disputes with various girlfriends which got the police called on him, including stalking, and physical violence. Wow, an incompetent asshole, sounds like a good fit for the Bushies!
I just wanted to let you know that in about a minute, the US government will have spent $500,000 on the war in Iraq. Wait another minute.... yup, another half a million dollars.
Just wanted to let you know. In case, you know... you forgot...
