Administration's Message on Iraq Now Strikes Discordant Notes

[kskiska]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — It will be more than a year before the country hears the conclusions of the commission that President Bush reluctantly appointed on Friday to examine what has gone wrong with American intelligence collection.

But in recent days, it has been obvious in Washington that something has also gone awry in a White House that prides itself on never wavering from its message, especially when the subject is Iraq. At moments, Mr. Bush and his national security team — badgered for explanations about whether the country would have gone to war if it knew then what it knows now — have sounded as if these days, it is every warrior for himself.

Rather than uniform and disciplined, their answers have been ad hoc and inconsistent. And the result is that the president appears very much on the defensive just at a moment when his aides thought he would be reaping the political benefits of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein.

(snip)

The change in pitch began with Mr. Bush himself, who in the heady days after Mr. Hussein's fall regularly declared that it was only a matter of time before weapons of mass destruction would be found. When the chief American weapons inspector, David A. Kay, emerged from Iraq and punctured whatever remained of that confidence, Mr. Bush shifted, declaring that the war there had been the right one to fight, for reasons having little to do with any Iraqi weapons that could have been imminently used. Yet he declared his unwavering confidence in the intelligence that lands on his desk every morning at 8, and in the people who provide it.

On Friday afternoon, looking unusually ill at ease in the White House press room while quickly announcing most of the members of his commission, he acknowledged that "some prewar intelligence assessments by America and other nations about Iraq's weapons stockpiles have not been confirmed."

more…
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/politics/07ASSE.html?hp

[Shakira]

1. When everything comes out about

the US and Israel vs the various Arab states, I predict violent demonstrations in the streets.

[Bonobo]

3. Huh? Why bring Israel in this?

Sounds like you got your own agenda...

[DuctapeFatwa]

6. Because Israel is where the US keeps its weapons, to guard America's oil

The Israeli people should be in the streets, too.

edit to change headline to read "America's oil," since that is what the regime considers it to be.

[aquart]

7. Wow. Postage-stamp sized Israel is a weapon's storehouse.

About how much land would that take, do you think?

How about a source and a link?

Would that be heavy artillery? Missiles? Have we been keeping it all polished and battle ready?

Or maybe you're talking about the arms we sold them to keep them from being overrun and murdered by those people who have sworn a holy war to kill them all?

Because Israel isn't an oil country. (Although I did hear about that shocking natural gas find. Let me assure you, had anyone had the smallest clue it was there in 1948, nobody would have voted to give the Jews even the postage stamp country they have.)

[DuctapeFatwa]

11. Personally, I think the Israeli people deserve better than a weapons dump

run by thugs, and I don't think that the people who went there in 1948 did so because they wanted to make a few rich men richer.

Those interested may want to google to learn more about Anglo-US adventures in the region for the past near century.

[kysrsoze]

14. How about 300 nuclear warheads, TONS of chemical weapons...

some of which I've seen video of being used on Palestinians, and a number of defense contractors who sell to the United States. How about people like Paul Wolfowitz, who previously worked for the Israeli government.

As for murder, why don't you mention all the Palestinians who were murdered because they refused to leave their homes in 1948?

Rather than ask us for sources, maybe you should just read a bit more? I suggest you start with "Drinking the Sea at Gaza," written by an Israeli Haaretz reporter.

BTW - there is no apostrophe in "weapon's."

[ignatius]

16. "Arms we sold them." What a joke, our treasury issues AID

to Israel bonds, guaranteed by the U S government, that says 50% of the money raised has to be used to purchase weapons. That in addition to the Billions in foreign adi we provide them, more than all aid to all other foreign countries combines.

Israel is bought and paid for by the US.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. Didn't the Sharon gov't set up a special group

to feed juiced-up "intelligence" to the White House? Isn't there speculation that this is where the Niger yellowcake story came from?

[DuctapeFatwa]

5. I doubt it. The US has a court appointed dictator who disappears people

runs concentration camps and regularly seizes peoples' relatives, including children for "interrogation."

something like 40 million Americans have no access to health care and the country is in the process of phasing out both the middle class and non-oilngun industry.

Leave the 9-11 events alone, the regime has decreed that they not be looked into too closely.

The ball is in the rest of the world's court now. They can sit and wait for their turn for "regime change," or they can form a coalition and disarm the US.

[aquart]

8. The ball is where?

Are you advocating invasion of the United States? Maybe nuclear war?

Way to go. That'll show Israel.

[DuctapeFatwa]

13. I would prefer that the US voluntarily cease agression and disarm

However, I am not optimistic about that possibility.

Whether to sit quietly and await the bombing of their own cities, or disarm the US is a decision that is the rest of the world's to make.

[reprobate]

15. Don't completely discount the possibility.

I think more and more people are seeing the uselessness of war and violence. The fact that SO many are angry with the * regime will connect violence, war and the neocons in peoples minds.

There will be a backlash.

[KissMyAsscroft]

2. Its called a Whitewash...

Everyone says something different....the rats scatter...

[pacifictiger]

4. they should've studied shakespeare more ...

oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

[aquart]

9. Wouldn't have helped. That's Walter Scott.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive" - Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808)

You should have been suspicious when it wasn't iambic pentameter.

<http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/misquotesfaq.html>

[tlcandie]

12. Israel link .. you will find VERY interesting information if you take time

to read this article titled, "THE LIE FACTORY"

http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html

One little snip...

<snip>
Feith, a former aide to Richard Perle at the Pentagon in the 1980s and an activist in far-right Zionist circles, held the view that there was no difference between U.S. and Israeli security policy and that the best way to secure both countries' future was to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem not by serving as a broker, but with the United States as a force for "regime change" in the region.
<snip>