Is Bush neuro-impaired?

POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 16, 2004 02:09
VIEWED: 8191
PAGE 7 of 10

Quote:

---

and when we asked him to show proof of their destruction or of their existance and to hand what he DID have over to the U.N., Saddam balked

---

He didn't "scurry" them out of Iraq. What we didn't bomb during Gulf War I (suspected WMD sites were generally targeted first) or destroy afterwards at various munitions sites (most notably at Khamisiya, but elsewhere as well) SADDAM HIMSELF DESTROYED. This is what UNMOVIC was about to validate (due to problems outlined below, this was a difficult task) and what Duelfer basically confirmed. It IS a little hard to turn over what you don't have!

Unfortunately, neither we nor Saddam inventoried stockpiles ahead of destruction so it was impossible to do more than estimate what happened to them. In addition, although Saddam destroyed his stockpiles and revealed most dual-use components (there were a few vials of cultures here and there, some biological - not nuclear- centrifuges, some PCs) he put on a big show of being cagey about it.

BTW, I have made this point b4 about WMD program components but I will try to be extremely specific about it - many "dual use" components are so common to normal industrial, scientific and infrastructural activities that it is almost impossible to ferret out each an every item. In our analytical lab, we have HUNDREDS of items that would be tagged as "dual use" items. And I hate to tell you how many items are missing according to our yearly iventory, especially items over 15 years old that are shuffled around, scavenged for parts, formally "surplused" and removed from inventory one year only to reappear on inventory due to some stupid computer glitch.

Same thing with paperwork. On occasion we have to dig up some 15-year-old file for Public Information Request or to resolve some legal issue, and although we try very diligently to retrieve all the info, quite frankly we probably only find 90-95% of it! That's why I don't gasp in horror about a few things here or there, or even about Bush's "missing" service records. I know only too well how that goes!!

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

A lot has happened since I last visited this fine site.

Where to begin ...

It's so nice to be misquoted. Bush does that all the time to phony an argument. Taking lessons from your master, Geezer?

I could go around and around with all sorts of quotes, examples, links, and reason, but you know Geezer, that doesn't fly anywhere with you. So I'll just ask you straight out - are you stupid or dishonest?

Did you not go to ANY OTHER LINK I posted ?? Do you not see the value of looking to MANY sources, sieving out the points of concurrence and leaving the chaff behind? Did you not read my summary where I SAID - upfront, that I took the best supported information and left out the 'stuff'?

In general I work from original documents. I presume you know enough about the media to be skeptical of the news yourself. The AP wire said that AP had obtained the text of the report, but didn't post a link. So we, you and I, are stuck with parsimonious quotes squeezed onto the news, and reams of paraphrases, spin, editorializing, speculation and all sorts of 'stuff' that doesn't have anything to do with reality. Like a newspaper analyst for the CIA, one has to read A LOT to find the news. There were two links just dripping with 'stuff'. The Vanguard was one of them. I'm surprised you're not harping about the other one as well.

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by rue:
So I'll just ask you straight out - are you stupid or dishonest?

---

hehehe I think your my kind of stupid...
not like the other kind.



" Don't Blame Me I Voted For Kudos "

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

In a report which might alternately be termed “stunning” or “terrifying”, United Nations weapons inspectors

---

Who called the report 'stunning' or 'terrifying'? The proximity to the UN's name might lead people to think, falsely, that the UN made this characterization. In fact it was the author of the article.

Quote:

---

confirmed last week not merely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,

---

No other news mentioned WMD

Quote:

---

but that he smuggled them out of his country, before, during and after the war.

---

a conclusion contradicted by a direct quote which said they could neither trace many items to Iraq (except for the ones with the tags, of course) and that they also didn't know when they were moved.

Quote:

---

Late last week, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) briefed the Security Council on Saddam's lightning-fast dismantling of missile and WMD sites before and during the war.

---

A lie contradicted by direct quotes.

Quote:

---

UNMOVIC executive chairman Demetrius Perricos detailed not only the export of thousands of tons of missile components, nuclear reactor vessels and fermenters for chemical and biological warheads, but also the discovery of many (but not most) of these items - with UN inspection tags still on them -- as far afield as Jordan, Turkey and even Holland.

---

This is one part of the story which is somewhat supported by other news items. Of course it fails to include the fact that, except for the missile engines, these items were common industrial equipment, a fact given major coverage by other news sources.

Quote:

---

Notably absent from that list is Iraq's western neighbor Syria, ruled by its own Baath Party just like Saddam's and closed to even the thought of an UNMOVIC inspection. Israeli intelligence has been reporting the large-scale smuggling of Saddam's WMD program across the Syrian border since at least two months before the war. Syria has long been the world's foremost state-sponsor of terrorism.

---

And this is YOUR quote about WMD. You deliberately confounded it with UN information, though it is NOT from the UN report, but from reports of Israeli reports ....

Quote:

---

Perricos highlighted the proliferation danger to the Security Council, as well he should: UNMOVIC has no idea where most of the WMD material is today, just that it exists and it's gone; and anything in Syria is likely to be in Jerusalem or New York tomorrow.

---

And that's another part that is supported by other news items. It fails to mention that UN inspectors have been TRYING to keep tabs on this stuff, have been saying that the lack of security is a problem, but have not been allowed into Iraq.

Quote:

---

This is the biggest news story of 2004 so far. Yet you haven't heard about it, have you? You probably haven't heard about Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin either -- a socialist and no friend of America. Addressing a group of 700 university researchers and business leaders in Montreal last month, Martin stated bluntly that terrorists have acquired WMDs from Saddam. “The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Hussein had, we don't know where they are…. [T]errorists have access to all of them,” the Canadian premier warned.

---

But as everyone in touch with reality knows, Hussein had no nuclear weapons, programs, or even rudimentary facilities.

Quote:

---

The tip of this terrorist sword was scarcely deflected on April 26th, when Jordanian intelligence broke up an al Qaeda conspiracy to detonate a large chemical device in the capital city of Amman. Directed by al Qaeda terrorist leader Abu al-Zarqawi -- the same man who personally beheaded American Nicholas Berg in Iraq last month -- the plotters sought to use a massive explosion to spread a “toxic cloud”, meant to wipe out the U.S. embassy, the Jordanian prime minister's office, the Jordanian intelligence headquarters, and at least 20,000 civilians (by contrast, only 3,000 died on 9/11).

---

I have to admit to professional curiosity about

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by rue:
A lot has happened since I last visited this fine site.

Where to begin ...

It's so nice to be misquoted. Bush does that all the time to phony an argument. Taking lessons from your master, Geezer?

---

Didn't realize I'd misquoted you. Where was that? Did you not find the four articles about WMD while googling for "demetrius perricos" un "security council" as I assumed? That's the only quote I could find.

Quote:

---

I could go around and around with all sorts of quotes, examples, links, and reason, but you know Geezer, that doesn't fly anywhere with you. So I'll just ask you straight out - are you stupid or dishonest?

---

Are those the only choices allowed for people who don't agree with you 100%? Guess I should be grateful for any choice at all.

Quote:

---

Did you not go to ANY OTHER LINK I posted ?? Do you not see the value of looking to MANY sources, sieving out the points of concurrence and leaving the chaff behind? Did you not read my summary where I SAID - upfront, that I took the best supported information and left out the 'stuff'?

In general I work from original documents. I presume you know enough about the media to be skeptical of the news yourself. The AP wire said that AP had obtained the text of the report, but didn't post a link. So we, you and I, are stuck with parsimonious quotes squeezed onto the news, and reams of paraphrases, spin, editorializing, speculation and all sorts of 'stuff' that doesn't have anything to do with reality. Like a newspaper analyst for the CIA, one has to read A LOT to find the news. There were two links just dripping with 'stuff'. The Vanguard was one of them. I'm surprised you're not harping about the other one as well.

---

Okay. One more time. This all started way above in your post of Saturday, October 23, 2004 - 14:42
when you stated:

Quote:

---

To go on to the claim of WMD that you (Auraptor)made:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,122311,00.html
http://www.novogate.com/exco/thread.php?forumid=2302&threadid=60906
http://www.fbbn.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?category=17&id=1072101891
http://www.thevanguard.org/thevanguard/columns/040618.shtml?ID=13323
Even the most right-wing of these, dripping with sarcasm and innuendo, repeat the same facts (speculation and innuendo stripped):

---

You then listed some facts, including:

Quote:

---

. As the quote below reveals, your assertion that 'WMDs were shipped out of Iraq' before, during and after the invasion are not supported by the UN report.

---

And then a quote from Fox. But the Vanguard article states:

Quote:

---

: “In a report which might alternately be termed “stunning” or “terrifying”, United Nations weapons inspectors confirmed last week not merely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but that he smuggled them out of his country, before, during and after the war.

Late last week, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) briefed the Security Council on Saddam's lightning-fast dismantling of missile and WMD sites before and during the war.”

---

This didn't seem to me to be "repeating the same facts". It appears to be in direct contradiction to what you said. The only facts it does agree with you on are not bones of contention, such as the presence of UN tags on some equipment. Taking the Vanguard article as a whole, it posits that WMD and WMD development materials were smuggled out of Iraq by previous regime forces, possibly to Syria. This didn't seem to be supporting the point you were trying to make, and I wondered why you chose it as a cite for your position.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that anything less than total agreement with the party line is a crime, and the Gang of Four (that would be SignyM, Ghoul, yourself and Gino) leapt to the attack, completely missing the point of my question.

Come on. Even someone as "stupid" as I can see that the Vanguard story is as biased as a Michael Moore documentory. The stuff about "One wonders where CNN and USA Tod

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thank you, Rue. I don't know where you get the patience!

The "case" against Saddam is based on paranoia. People like Auraptor will point to a complete void and say "The fact that nothing is there proves that Saddam hid it!" That type of logic killed a lot of "witches" a few hundred years ago!

For those who are still so afraid that Saddam had a robust WMD production program, and stockpiles of "tons" and "thousands of liters" of WMD-
Please, do yourselves a favor and RESEARCH everything you can. Go to original reports. Get some tapes by Scott Ritter, read Hans Blix's and David Kay's report, get some good scientific articles about WMD production- in other words, familiarize yourself with the facts and demystify the topic. Please don't use fourth-hand paranoid fantasy that has to distort every single point in order to make a case.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

One quick question to anyone {either side} who deigns to answer. And yes, it could be considered germaine to the thread. If spun correctly!

Which phrase do you REALLY believe MOST in:

"Might Makes Right"
OR
"With Great Power come Great Responsibility"

Just curious ... and thanks for your input!

"Remember, there is only ONE absolute - There ARE NO absolutes!!!"

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Geezer- I can't speak for Rue, but I think she (?) already answered that question with the part of her post that said- Have you never looked at multiple articles to find the parts that were consistent?

Having become familiar with Rue's style of posting, I think the point was to link to ALL sources of information so that people with opposing viewpoints couldn't claim that she missed or censored dissenting views.

I really don't understand why you're making such a big deal about this, it seems very obvious to me.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SignyM:
Geezer- I can't speak for Rue, but I think she (?) already answered that question with the part of her post that said- Have you never looked at multiple articles to find the parts that were consistent?

Having become familiar with Rue's style of posting, I think the point was to link to ALL sources of information so that people with opposing viewpoints couldn't claim that she missed or censored dissenting views.

I really don't understand why you're making such a big deal about this, it seems very obvious to me.

---

Me making a big deal?

I just asked:

"Rue, you might want to remove the Vanguard link from your list of cites, since it disagrees with just about everything you said. Or were you just checking to see if we're still awake? "

...and got this back from you.

Quote:

---

Geezer- are YOU awake?? Grab some coffee, bring your normal skepticism to the table, and read this CAREFULLY:


Quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Late last week, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) briefed the Security Council on Saddam's lightning-fast dismantling of missile and WMD sites before and during the war. UNMOVIC executive chairman Demetrius Perricos detailed not only the export of thousands of tons of missile components, nuclear reactor vessels and fermenters for chemical and biological warheads, but also the discovery of many (but not most) of these items - with UN inspection tags still on them -- as far afield as Jordan, Turkey and even Holland.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Now, where did it say that WMD were removed? It said that "missile components", "nuclear reactor vessels" and "fermenters" "WITH UN INSPECTION TAGS STILL ON THEM" went missing.

Missiles, fermenters, and nuclear reactor vessels are NOT.. repeat NOT... WMD. Missiles are, well, missiles. Saddam was allowed missiles (Samoud or S2) for defensive purposes provided that they didn't exceed a certain range (I think it was 120 miles) and carried conventional warheads. Every nation in the world has missiles. You may at times see Saddam's missiles referred to as "ballistic" missiles, making them sound even scarier because we all think about "intercontinental ballistic missiles" or ICBMs, but "ballistic" simply means unguided: It get shot high up into the air and lands where the initial trajectory pointed it.

Nuclear reactor vessels are part of CIVILIAN nuclear power generation and medical research, and that is many, many many many steps removed from nuclear weapons. A number of universities in the USA have nuclear reactors to make isotopes and create gamma rays for medical purposes, for example.

Fermenters have a number of legitimate uses, including brewing beer and culturing mold-based antibiotics like penicillin. The part of the article that says: "fermenters for chemical and biological warheads" is a lie. The UN had already assessed that these items were NOT part of a WMD program.

It's just like the 380 tons of high explosives that disappreared from under USA noses. It COULD be used to detonate a nuclear device and will likely be portrayed as a "WMD" or "WMD component" in right-wing newspapers, but that was not what it was being used for in Iraq, and like the other missing items it had been tagged and was being monitored by the UN (intil the USA screwed them up).

BTW- our lab has already had to sign several export license agreements for "dual use" items like pressure sensors (it COULD be used in a nuclear reactor!) and chemical detectors (they COULD be used for making CWA!). My gosh- may as well tag our lab too!

---

...followed by...

Quote:

---

Regarding the foiled attack in Jordan:


Quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One wonders where CNN and USA Today think twenty tons of nerve gas and sarin came from
------------------------------------------------------------

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME