SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Iran trying to take over Southern Iraq?

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Nigeria may have oil, but since Saddam had plenty of his own, what else is there? Oil is definitely not what Saddam was after.

-S

Subman - good question. We had people talking about Nigeria and the only thing there is oil. The claim made by the US and Britain was that Iraq was buying yellowcake from Niger, which is a totally different country.

I could have my countries wrong. Let me find that Libby case. It opens up some previously classified docs.

-S

It was Niger. Here are the declassified docs from Scooter Libby's trial:

http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/6956/n1jj3.gif
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/4559/n2kh7.gif

Full transcript here:

http://wid.ap.org/documents/libbytrial/jan23/DX71.pdf

Basically, Bush wasn't lying.

-S

IIRC, that intel came from Britain.

Sure why wouldn't Bush want to believe it? As if he were a little boy, it reinforced what he wanted to believe. But the CIA advised him strongly against using it as part of his formal causus beli because of deep misgivings about the validity of the intelligence.

These misgivings were deep enough that Britain also dropped the allegations from our list of complaints.

But nevermind, in the document you cite, it comes no further than alleging that an Iraqi delegation was wanting to ask about the possibliity of trade, possibly involving getting yellowcake from Niger - and failing to even get a hearing.

Which is to confirm that the pariah status, weapons inspections and sanctions were doing their job and had rendered Iraq's ability to pursue WMD impossible.

My conclusion: This is yet another pathetic and unmanly attempt by Bush and his groupies at damage limitation, and an attempt to present lies, foolhardiness and wishful thinking as fact, responsibility and determination. Frankly I'm amazed you right wing fanboys are still buying this stuff, but my suspicion is this little charade is for you anyway, most other people long ago stopped taking anything that comes out of these people's mouths as credible.

Technically I have to agree with Subman.

Bush did not lie. Of course this depends on your definition of lying.

The Bush administration selectively "cherry-picked" intel that supported his agenda

The Bush administration selectively excluded intel that refuted his agenda

The Bush administration represented inferences that supported his agenda with a level of credibility and confidence that it did not deserve (there is a big difference between we believe he has WMD and "we know where they are")

The Bush administration did not offer up opposing hypotheses for consideration. (there was in fact considerable dissent in not only the US intel but in the UK intel. The argument that "all the intelligence agencies agreed" is not correct)

The Bush administration spun their agenda to both the congress and the American people and both were too stupid and lazy to read the open source documents. ( I can excuse the American public as they have a long history of ignorance concerning international policy, but I still can not forgive congress. It was their job to academically and intellectually challenge the Bush administrations assertions.) My opinion: Congress betrayed the American citizens and our country by not challenging and verifying the assertions of the Executive Branch of the government before rendering a decision. That's the whole purpose of the checks and balances concept of our government.

The Bush administration constructed very carefully created speeches designed to lead the audience into making their own inferences. (Bush never said that Iraq was linked to 911, but he sure did imply that by linking them together in his speeches). This is a well known technique of manipulation called Association.

So did Bush lie? Probably not if you define lying as the total fabrication of information.

Did Bush tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Probably not.

We have to remember that the Bush administration are not analysts, they are politicians. They had an agenda they wanted to implement. As George Tenant said, selling this to the American people would be a "slam dunk".

And it was. :nope:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Platapus

The Bush administration spun their agenda to both the congress and the American people and both were too stupid and lazy to read the open source documents. ( I can excuse the American public as they have a long history of ignorance concerning international policy, but I still can not forgive congress. It was their job to academically and intellectually challenge the Bush administrations assertions.) My opinion: Congress betrayed the American citizens and our country by not challenging and verifying the assertions of the Executive Branch of the government before rendering a decision. That's the whole purpose of the checks and balances concept of our government.

That can be blamed on a combination of political anxiety on the part of COngress and threatening posturing on the part of the Executive.
Linking Al-Qaeda and Iraq was part of a larger PR effort that cast any dissent, be it public or political, as anti-American, and, haeven forfend, unwilling to stand up for those who died on 9/11. No politician then or today would go against a populace whipped up by belligerent patriotism and crippling fear.

I wouldnt say that Bush lied per se, it's too hard to to pin down to a disconnect. Bull**** works so much better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tchocky

I wouldnt say that Bush lied per se, it's too hard to to pin down to a disconnect. Bull**** works so much better.

white lie

NOUN:
An often trivial, diplomatic or well-intentioned untruth.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trex

The irony of Saddam's fall is that he could have - at any time up to the day before the USA moved in - stopped the whole thing by simply saying, "OK, we have changed our minds. Sorry for the previous problems. Come on in now and look for yourselves. Your inspectors can go anywhere. We will provide the records you want. You can have unrestricted access to our scientists. We have nothing to hide and are willing to prove it. How can we help you?" Faced with that (and of course real subsequent cooperation), the legs would have been cut out from under even the most rabid Saddam-hater in Washington. Instead, he stonewalled, dodged, lied - and died.

As I put it earlier, he was playing poker with a guy bent on upsetting the card table and call his bluff with a hail of gunfire.

He just didn't know when to fold.

When thinking about those days in February/March 2003, I like to read over Baudrillard.
Tough & gnarly, but I think his analysis, written less than a fortnight before the war, has been borne out in practice.

Quote:

"Evil" is what arrives without prevention, and therefore without the possibility of prevention. It is, of course, the case with September 11. It is precisely that event that is radically opposed to the nonevent of the war. September 11 is an impossible and unimaginable event. It is carried out even before being itself possible (even disaster films did not anticipate it; on the contrary, they exhausted the imaginary possibility of such an event). It is about the extreme unforeseeable (where one finds a paradox according to which a thing does not become possible until only after it has taken place).
The difference is complete with the current war, which, by contrast, has been envisaged, programmed, and anticipated so much that it does not even need to take place. And even if it takes place in "reality," it will already have virtually taken place and thus it will not be an event. Here, reality is a virtual horizon. This take-over by the virtual is further reinforced by the fact that the announced war is like the double, the clone of the first Gulf war (just like Bush is his father's clone). The crucial event has thus been bracketed by two cloned events.
One can understand better from this perspective how this current war is a substitute event, a ghost event, and a puppet [fantoche] event bearing the image of Saddam. This is an immense mystification -- for the Americans themselves. With September 11 a gigantic task of contraception developed at the same time as a process of mourning. The idea was to ensure that September 11 had, in fact, not taken place, using the same principle of prevention, but this time retrospectively. An endeavor without hope or end.

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=494

The key problem is that there is a real, present and serious danger to the western world and our belief that the state is subservient to, and owned by, the individual. There are people out there who hate us and our way of living not because of anything we have done, but simply because we exist and who will do anything and everything possible to kill us and destroy our society. Sadly, this fact has been hidden in rhetoric, lost in political bafflegab and used by senior people - who should bloody well have known better! - to serve their own shabby political ends. We are so lost in the posturing, the 'isms' and the politics that we have lost sight of what is looming in the darkness outside.

It was Gibbon, I think, that concluded that Rome did not fall because of a shortage of people willing to die for the Empire. Even in the last desperate days there was never a shortage of men willing to do that. No, he concluded, Rome fell in the end because of a lack of people willing to live for Rome - and that takes an entirely different order of courage.

In the end, we shall get our just desserts.