U.S. leaks report of no weapons in Iraq

[Robbien]

(Mods, I do not believe this is a duplicate because it is an article on how the story was leaked and downplayed)

USA Today

<snip>

In the end, as a hurricane distracted Americans, as terrorist car bombings and U.S. air strikes bloodied Iraq, the findings of a Duelfer-led investigation were quietly leaked in Washington. And after 16 months of trying, what his teams have found is less than little.

In fact, the only unconventional weapon turned up in Iraq wasn't turned up by the Americans at all, but by the other side, Iraq's shadowy resistance. In May, in an incident causing no serious injuries, insurgent fighters in Baghdad rigged an old artillery shell as a roadside bomb, apparently unaware it was loaded with sarin nerve agent. Otherwise, two or three stray shells have been discovered with traces of degraded agent — far short of the 100-500 tons of usable chemical weapons that Colin Powell warned of on Feb. 5, 2003, as he sought a U.N. blessing for the U.S.-British invasion.

. . .

President Bush's rationale for war — that Iraq's alleged doomsday arms posed an imminent threat — faded steadily in the months after the March 2003 invasion, as official U.S. rhetoric switched from "stockpiles" of weapons to "programs" to make them.

By Thursday, as Duelfer's upcoming report was broadly outlined to reporters in Washington, the focus had switched again, to Iraqi "intent" before the invasion — to what were described as hopes among Iraqi leaders during the Saddam regime of someday reviving Iraqi weapons-making.

much more
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-09-18-iraq-nowmd_x.htm

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. don't expect connies to get it

the war was ilegal

[fugue]

2. Everyone who doesn't have WMDs *wants* WMDs . . .

It's simply a matter of wanting to discourage those with them from invading you. Unless you have at least a few, you're in danger. That's the way it's gonna be until no one or everyone has them.

Only in fundamentalist religions are thoughts punishable. Everyone else goes by actions.

[Robbien]

3. This story and the word "leaked" in the headline went out on AP

and was picked up by several dozen news sites.

It is unusual that the news sites are openly saying this story was leaked by the WH in the hopes that it would be hidden by a Friday news dump in the middle of everything else which is happening. And it highlights how the story kept being downgraded by the WH over the past year and it highlights that Blix was right.

It also goes on to say that this chemical weapons warehouse chain can not be proven to be weapons at all. This article pulls the last leg out from under the right wing arguments. Wonder if it will get any play on the television media.

[Malva Zebrina]

4. Intent--yeah--how pathetic an excuse

President Bush's rationale for war — that Iraq's alleged doomsday arms posed an imminent threat — faded steadily in the months after the March 2003 invasion, as official U.S. rhetoric switched from "stockpiles" of weapons to "programs" to make them.

and now has switched to the "intent" to make "programs" .There were not even any programs.

This was no "rational" for war--this was plain and simple lying on the part of Bush and Powell , Rice, Wolfowitz and all the other pricks that hover like a black clowd of death, over this insane, idiot dumass.


And no one had the nerve, except for a few brave souls, to call them on it. The corrupt media is as much to blame as George Bush.

And all the bloody slaughter , the loss of human life, much of it seen in the bloodied bodies of little children, is nothing to them.

It means not a damn thing as long as they can hold on to the power to grant selected, contributing corporations silver lined contracts and make billions and billions of dollars of profit from it.

They seized that power illegally in the first place, and again, no one except for a brave few, called them on it.

[jimshoes]

5. Reality for these people changes like

the back drops in a theater production. Tired of one reality, drop in a new one. No one even says,... "Hey, what happened to that reality we believed in yesterday?".... "Hey this one is at odds with the other one! " ... No, no one questions big brother because, er uh, well they just don't that's all. I am flummoxed by the kool-aid drinkers.