Sunday, June 29, 2003

Intelligence, Iraq, and WMD In the debate about whether the Bush administration distorted the truth in order to make its case for war with Iraq, I haven't seen a better, more concise summary than this e-mail from MoveOn.org: On March 17th, in the eve of the Iraq war, President Bush told the American people that "intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." (2) White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said simply, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." (3) And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld elaborated: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." (4) Now, after two months of searching by the most skilled teams in the military, not a single piece of solid evidence of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons programs in Iraq has been found. The top 87 sites identified by U.S. Central Command have turned up only vacuum cleaners, a swimming pool for Iraq's Olympic team, and a license plate factory. (5) Officials in the CIA and other intelligence agencies have complained for months that they have been under pressure to "cook the books" on Iraq intelligence. (6) Worse, a number of the key pieces of evidence that the Bush administration has released have come unraveled: The President's State of the Union claim that Iraq possessed an active nuclear program was based on fraudulent documents that included the forged signature of an official that weren't even in office at the time. (7) The dossier that Prime Minister Blair and Secretary Powell relied upon in critical presentations turned out to have been partially plagiarized from a graduate student's paper from 12 years ago. (8) The claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes, first made by Prime Minister Tony Blair, now appears to have been fabricated. (9) The administration's claim that two tractor trailer trucks found in Iraq housed "mobile weapons labs" has now been disputed by numerous experts inside and outside of the military. An official British investigation has concluded that the trailer trucks were "exactly what the Iraqis said they were -- facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons." (10) [pseudorandom] 3:50:32 PM

Weapons of Mass Distraction Now let’s put two and two together:  We are currently living under the most secretive government in modern American history. The Bush administration is so paranoid, so disdainful of the public’s right to know, that it makes the Nixon administration look like an open house. Under these circumstances, can we really tolerate a docile, unquestioning media, too? Can we really expect to maintain democracy when all the TV cameras and radio microphones are in the hands of a fistful of flag-waving, jingoistic, mouthpieces of the administration and who owe their broadcast licenses to a secretive agency under the direct control of the White House? Doesn’t that sound just a little too much like something Joseph Goebbels, the great Nazi propagandist, would have admired? [via birdhouse.org] 3:47:22 PM

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