War is peace
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Sunday, March 8, 2026 23:49
VIEWED: 7556
PAGE 1 of 8
Ignorance is strength.
Up is down.
I love Big Brother.
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Quote:
Cheney: Weapons Report Justifies Iraq War
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
MIAMI - Vice President Dick Cheney asserted on Thursday that a finding by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that Saddam Hussein's government produced no weapons of mass destruction after 1991 justifies rather than undermines President Bush's decision to go to war.
The report shows that "delay, defer, wait wasn't an option," Cheney told a town hall-style meeting.
HUH???
Quote:
"The headlines all say no weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad. We already knew that," Cheney said.
US Vice President Dick Cheney once said: "There's no doubt Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." President George W. Bush once said there is: "no doubt the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." And the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said: "We know where they are."
Quote:
He said other parts of the report were "more intriguing." Cheney's comments reflect a GOP strategy to use portions of the report, including abuses of Iraq's "fuel for food" program, to try to move discussion away from the central conclusions on the absence of weapons of mass destruction.
OH, I GET IT! We REALLY went to war because of corruption in the Food for Oil program! Well, sh*t, why didn't they just say so in the beginning??
Quote:
Although the report says Saddam's weapons program had deteriorated since the 1991 Gulf War and did not pose a threat to the world in 2003, it also says Saddam's main goal was the removal of international sanctions.
"As soon as the sanctions were lifted he had every intention of going back" to his weapons program, Cheney said.
See, there you have it!! Proof that Saddam was on a 15-year plan to obtain WMD!!
Quote:
"The suggestion is clearly there by Mr. Duelfer that Saddam had used the program in such a way that he had bought off foreign governments and was building support among them to take the sanctions down," Cheney said.
Thus there was no reason to wait to invade Iraq to give inspectors more time to do their work, Cheney said.
"The sanctions regime was coming apart at the seams," Cheney told a later forum in Fort Myers. "Saddam perverted that whole thing and generated billions of dollars. ... He used the funds to corrupt others."
On Wednesday, the former head of the U.N. weapons inspection team, Hans Blix, said: "Had we had a few months more (of inspections before the war), we would have been able to tell both the CIA and others that there were no weapons of mass destruction (at) all the sites that they had given to us."
Duelfer's report said what ambitions Saddam harbored for such weapons were secondary to his goal of evading the sanctions, and he wanted weapons primarily not to attack the United States or to provide them to terrorists but to oppose his older enemies, Iran and Israel.
So very clearly we see the need to intercept these nefarious plans in the bud!
SHEESH!!
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Quote:Then the 'irrelevant' UN worked, I take it.
... it also says Saddam's main goal was the removal of international sanctions.
"As soon as the sanctions were lifted he had every intention of going back" to his weapons program, Cheney said.
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Of course.
The funny thing is, this time Cheney is almost telling the truth. Iraq was about to sign big oil contracts with Russia and France. The only thing holding up the deal were those sanctions. If the UN had a couple more months the contracts would have been signed and US oil firms would have been big losers. That's why Cheney "couldn't wait" for the UN to finsh the job!
When I listen to the Administration *SSHOLES lie bald-faced, it makes me want to get up and do what any intelligent, sane, thoughtful person would do....
Stand up and say....
LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE!!!
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"Liar, Liar" by the Castaways came up on my Winamp playlist when I got done reading Cheney's quotes.
Coincedence, or divine intervention. . .?
PS: That gives me an idea for a video!
"You've just gotta go ahead and change the captain of your brainship, because he's drunk at the wheel."
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Then the 'irrelevant' UN worked, I take it.
Until the bribes got big enough.
Hussein Used Oil to Dilute Sanctions
Report Says He Gave Valuable Vouchers to Those Who Helped Iraq
By Robin Wright and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 7, 2004; Page A01
Saddam Hussein made $11 billion in illegal income and eroded the world's toughest economic embargo during his final years as Iraq's leader through shrewd schemes to secretly buy off dozens of countries, top foreign officials and major international figures, according to a new report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector released yesterday.
Oil "vouchers" that could be resold for large profits were given to officials including Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and former Russian presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky as well as governments, companies and influential individuals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the report said.
Another recipient was Benon Sevan, the former top U.N. official in charge of humanitarian relief. Sevan ran the former oil-for-food program designed to benefit the Iraqi people in the face of economic sanctions intended to cripple Saddam's regime, the report says.
Russia, France and China -- all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- were the top three countries in which individuals, companies or entities received the lucrative vouchers. Hussein's goal, the report said, was to provide financial incentives so that these nations would use their influence to help undermine what Duelfer called an "economic stranglehold" imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
"At a minimum, Saddam wanted to divide the five permanent members and foment international public support of Iraq at the U.N. and throughout the world by a savvy public relations campaign and an extensive diplomatic effort," the report said.
Hussein's effort to thwart the embargo and divide the nations that supported it has long been known, but the Duelfer report reveals the lengths to which he went in attempting to defy the United Nations. The details could buttress Washington's contention that important players were preventing the U.N. program from squeezing Saddam, forcing the United States to launch a war to topple him.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13313-2004Oct6.html
And meanwhile, the gallant UN can't find any members (except those in the US-led coalition) willing to provide security for UN workers in Iraq, causing the workers' organizations to request that they all (all 35) be pulled out.
In June, the Security Council authorized a separate force to protect U.N. staff, but so far not a single country has offered troops. This means that the main job of protecting the new U.N. envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, and his team has fallen to the U.S.-led coalition force.
The staff associations said the lack of a separate U.N. protection force makes it "even more difficult to comprehend why U.N. staff members would be sent to Iraq when troops are not being deployed in the country."
But Fiji may be answering the call, to the shame of some larger nations.
Elsewhere, Fiji's U.N. Ambassador, Isikia Savua, told the council Wednesday that Fiji is preparing soldiers for deployment as security personnel for the U.N. in Iraq. He gave no details.
http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=105&sid=119692
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Quote:
The details could buttress Washington's contention that important players were preventing the U.N. program from squeezing Saddam, forcing the United States to launch a war to topple him.
To toppple Saddam because.... uh, why? If WMD were shown not to exist, why would the USA want to "topple" Saddam? The sanctions worked. They were designed to keep WMD out of Saddam's hands, not to topple Saddam's regime for no particular reason. And Blix was a couple of months from proving that there were no WMD despite lack of cooperation from some parts of the UN.
And by suggesting that the USA would invade Iraq ANYWAY, even if the sanctions worked (i.e. no WMD were found) you are basically concluding that the reason for the invasion was never about WMD at all.
In other words, as I've been saying since before we invaded... "It's all about the oil" It's ALWAYS been about the oil"
Right?
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Geezer, BTW- you should get a CD or tape of some of Scott Ritter's talks. He was one of OUR weapons inspectors on the UN team. He was quite frank about the fact that Hussein was draggin his feet and not really cooperating, and also about the fact thet teh UN was not really forcing Saddam to cooperate.
NONETHELESS, he detailed quite nicely all of the steps they took to find targets, to prevent the Iraqis from finding out what the inpsection target was going to be, the compostion of the teams, even the understanding of team members that they had 5 minutes to insepct a facility before important parts were "sanitized". After listening to Scott, I came away with an appreciation of how dedicated, forceful, thorough, and downright sneaky the inspections were. I did not think- and neither did Blix or other memebers of the inspection teams- that they missed anything significant, despite the corruption that was probably occuring in the Security Council and Humanitarian aid areas.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
To toppple Saddam because.... uh, why? If WMD were shown not to exist, why would the USA want to "topple" Saddam? The sanctions worked. They were designed to keep WMD out of Saddam's hands, not to topple Saddam's regime for no particular reason. And Blix was a couple of months from proving that there were no WMD despite lack of cooperation from some parts of the UN.
And by suggesting that the USA would invade Iraq ANYWAY, even if the sanctions worked (i.e. no WMD were found) you are basically concluding that the reason for the invasion was never about WMD at all.
In other words, as I've been saying since before we invaded... "It's all about the oil" It's ALWAYS been about the oil"
Right?
One theory you'll probably see from the administration (just guessing here) is that if Blix had found no WMD, the Oil-for-food bribees (Russia, France, China, etc.) would have pressed for removing sanctions. Once gone, they'd be almost impossible to re-enstate with three Security Council members in Saddam's pocket. Then someone, say Russia, since they're already doing the same with Iran, http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=105&sid=31818 would help Iraq with nuclear development. Hence Iraq with WMD.
Not actually too implausable, and that's all they need.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Yes, but do we invade nations because they have "plans" to have sanctions removed and then "potentially" further those plans to develop nuclear technology and then "maybe" WMD? Which BTW they would still need an intecontinental ballistic delivery system to be a threat to us.
That's a LOT of supposition on which to base an invasion! Pre-emption is supposed to be for "imminent" threats, not "potential" threats that may take years to develop, if at all. If that's going to be the Republican stance (We're gonna invade if we think you're even thinking about doing something) then the whole world is right to be afraid of us, because then WE are the madmen with WMD.
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... uh. Just sayin', the USA created the UN Sanctions "against" Iraq... if there is any problem with this program the USA has only itself to blame.
And of course, since certain Americans (like the ones in the White House) feel they should not just disagree with the UN but actively attack it, one has to wonder why the USA is against world peace, human rights, starvation relief, and peace keeping.
Remember... the UN is only as good as it's members let it be. Blaming the UN for something the USA, France, Russia, etc. did or did not do is like blaming the cat for what the dog did.
But on American TVs this week an attack upon the UN, with this uniquely American ignorant line of illogical reasoning, has begun. It seems plain that the Corporatism and Right Wing religious fundamentalism that runs the USA has declared war on anyone it doesn't like.
And that's pretty much the rest of the world considering this UN logic reversal.
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