Core of weapons case crumbling

By Paul Reynolds
BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

Of the nine main conclusions in the British government document "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction", not one has been shown to be conclusively true.

The confusion evident about one of the claims, that Iraq sought uranium from Niger despite having no civilian nuclear programme, is the latest example of the process under which the allegations made so confidently last September have been undermined.
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The nine main conclusions and the broad evidence which has emerged about them are these:

1. "Iraq has a useable chemical and biological weapons capability which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents."

No evidence of Iraq's useable capability has been found in terms of manufacturing plants, bombs, rockets or actual chemical or biological agents, nor any sign of recent production.

A mysterious truck has been found which the CIA says is a mobile biological facility but this has not been accepted by all experts.

2. "Saddam continues to attach great importance to the possession of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles... He is determined to retain these capabilities."

He may well have attached great importance to the possession of such weapons but none has been found. The meaning of the word "capability" is now key to this.

If the US and UK governments can show that Iraq maintained an active expertise, amounting to a "programme", they will claim their case has been made that Iraq violated UN resolutions. .....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3063361.stm

Like a house of cards, the so called justifications for war (ie. the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and destruction of their country) have collapsed under the weight of the viscious lies used to maintain it.

The "16 words" are just the candles--the cake is that the whole of the justification for war rested on shaky ground. We were sold a bill of goods and no goods to be found.

I've yet to see it made in the US media. Every single piece of evidence used to justify the war has been shown to be false. EVERY ONE! There was not a single piece of verifiable, solid evidence.

They won't make the conneciton between the Niger Uranium LIE and the WMD LIE. It is all part of the same process of making your conclusion (set policy) and then find something to substantiate it (in the middle is the "message" thing with focus groups).

The media is scared to make the connection and show that they whole thing was/is a lie.

I tried to find Dana Milbank's article in the WP just after W's Cincinnati speech and how none of the points he made could be substantiated and that the "intelligence agencies" were being told to shut up if they couldn't find anything. The article seems to be GONE, scrubbed clean.

I've noticed a bit of a change in the reporting. As a good example, there was a bit on the local (Cincinnati) news about a member of the 101st Airborne whose birthday was last Saturday. His family was holding a party without him.

The local TV crew showed up, but instead of a sappy wave-the-flag piece, we saw the soldier's mother tearing up as she talked about how she just prayed that her son wouldn't get hurt. But she knows that if it's not her son, then it will be someone else's. "I don't know what to pray for any more," she said.

The piece closed with a close-up of a hand-lettered sign on her front yard: The War Isn't Over Until My Son Comes Home.

Not what I expected, but it was darned good!

I don't usually watch news during the day, but I tuned in to Ari's last press conference today for "fun"

They cut to a Time magazine writer and another person talking to Wolf Blitzer, both of whom made this point - the 16 words are a minor part of the story -the bigger story is the lack of WMD, the lack of "evidence" related to ALL their claims before the war, all of which justifies a full investigation.

It made me happy to see and glad I tuned in.

Remember the summer of the shark well this is going to be the summer of the lie.

Thanks for the heads-up! That's good news indeed! I'm wondering if this is part of the set up. Make them defend this ONE claim as "oh it's only 16 words, just a minor slip up." Then follow-up with the other "slip-ups" and club them with it. I hope so. Anyway, thanks again.

wait, it wasn't all useless tripe, actually. Anyway, I believe it was Daniel Shore who made the case of tying the uranium cakes, the WMD AND the linkage of Saddam and Al Queda into one massive intelligence failure or even an (gasp!) oversell of the case for war in Iraq.

The mainstream press needs to get on this and the pols need to hold * and his cabal to account as the terroists they are.

in a book about JFK had the world in an uproar.

After reading Ari's, "The burden is on the critics to explain where the weapons of mass destruction are", I sent two emails to my Senators, explaining that the '16 words' was not the issue. The core issue is the credibility of anything said by the administration. I demanded that the Senate investigate the entire pre-war hype and all 'facts' stated by the idiots about 'imminent threat'. They claimed over and over that they had evidence and intelligence, now it's PUT UP OR GO DOWN!!

Okay, Ari said that the critics have to prove where the WMD are? So we are supposed to:

a. do their jobs for them
b. validate THEIR claims
c. prove where something is that apparently doesnt' exist and there was plenty of information available to even we peons before the war that WMD were not anywhere near the scope and readiness that W claimed.

This is ridiculous.

.

wasn't it? Prove the nonexistance of the WMD? These people are unbelievable.

After all, he's the one who made the claim.

We're the ones who were/are skeptical.

It's up to him to prove where the WMDs are.

Given that in this administration war is peace and black is white, I wonder if we're not missing the obvious.

What if we DID find the thousands of gallons of biological and chemical agents * claimed the Iraqi gonvernment had, and knew that they could all be traced back to a single source - the United States under the Reagan administration?

Think they'd come out and give us the 'proof' that Iraq indeed possessed WMD's? Or would they destroy them before they could be examined by an independent scientific panel?

I personally think they've found the WMD, and believed the political fallout would be less to claim they'd never been found than to admit we were the original source for the material. Unfortunately, this scenario also throws Blair to the wolves, but would they care? Of course not.

the point is that they needed to find the program to be able to manufacture and deliver...

After all, he says he's convinced and isn't that all that counts? :puke:

Two short sentences that embody all the lies and arrogance and illogic of the Bush administration.

... then they'd have to kill us. (It's a secret, after all. And we all know that keeping a secret is worth thousands of lives.)

DTH

Getting them to expose the lies of the Bush/Blair case for war is the first step.

All this stuff was known at DU a year ago.

I hope a year from now people will be asking where the media was in the run-up to war.

Go live in Iraq.