Prelude to a Bigger War?

[Winstonm]

The latest news - looks like the witch hunt has started for intel about Iran. Is Iran the next target for war?

 

ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) - A diplomatic row erupted after US forces arrested six people described by Iraqi and Iranian officials as the staff at an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil. "The Americans arrested five employees and took all the computers and documentation."

 

Tehran and the regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan accused US troops of raiding a diplomatic building -- which should have been protected under international law -- and demanded that the detainees be released.

 

But in Washington, a Pentagon spokesman denied that the building was a consulate and insisted the captives are "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces."

 

"If we get information that is actionable that the Iranians are interfering with Iraq, with Iraqis, or in any way going to harm Americans the we're going to take action," said national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

 

"The president made it clear last night that we will not tolerate outside interference in Iraq. And that's what the Iranians are up to." (emphasis added)

 

Let's see, the Iraqis said it was a consulate and Iran said it was a consulate but the Pentagon said it was a "spooky old building with a lot of creepy guys inside."???

 

Any bets those stolen computers will somehow magically print out a direct link between Iran and the al-Qaeda in Iraq?

[mike777]

Geez even the Democrats seem to be preparing for war with Iran. See Senator Bayh's(Ind) article in the New Yorker this week. Oh wait didn't those guys vote for Iraq too? :P

[pbleighton]

"Geez even the Democrats seem to be preparing for war with Iran. See Senator Bayh's(Ind) article in the New Yorker this week."

 

Anyone else (LIeberman doesn't count, he's not a Democrat any more)? The Dems I saw were all against it.

 

Will you be cheering the invasion of Iran, Mike?

 

It seems like the tenor of your posts has changed since the election.

 

They seem a little bitter :wacko:

 

Peter

[mike777]

See New Yorker...I rest my case

[rona_]

Let's see, the Iraqis said it was a consulate and Iran said it was a consulate but the Pentagon said in was a "spooky old building with a lot of creepy guys inside."???

 

They probably think all middle easterners look creepy, and any building that doesn't look like the the Embassies and Consulates on Embassy Row is spooky :lol:

[pbleighton]

"See New Yorker...I rest my case"

 

You rest all right :lol:

 

Peter

[Al_U_Card]

Any chance of pushing up the american presidential elections to....say...next month?

[pclayton]

Anyone discussed impeachment?

[Al_U_Card]

This "incursion" into the consulary building, if factual, is an international incident and must be treated as the unlawful act that it would be. When will enough be enough?

[Al_U_Card]

"The president made it clear last night that we will not tolerate outside interference in Iraq. And that's what the Iranians are up to."[/i] (emphasis added)

OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE IN IRAQ??????? What the hell does Bush think the American "presence" is? Unless he considers a bloodbath not to count.

[Al_U_Card]

What if the "terrorists" that "attacked" the US embassy in Athens said that the building housed "agents" who looked "suspicious" to them....would we accept this as reasonable?

[Winstonm]

"What if the "terrorists" that "attacked" the US embassy in Athens said that the building housed "agents" who looked "suspicious" to them"

 

I guess to people from other nations, a bunch of Americans might look "creepy".

 

Also, we can't impeach and convict Bush without also impeaching and convicting Cheney - then who would be put in charge, I wonder?

[Al_U_Card]

Is #3 in line the speaker of the house? or is it Condy Rice....(shades of Al Haig's "I'm in charge now" statement)

[pclayton]

#3 is Speaker.

 

Not sure if I want to see her mug on my TV every night either. :P

[Al_U_Card]

Nancy Pelosi?

[Winstonm]

When Nancy Pelosi found out she would be the new speaker of the house, she stated that "impeachment was off the table."

 

It has now been shown over and over that this administration begins with an agenda and then looks for supporting evidence for that agenda; it has happened in virtually every stand the White House has taken, and Iraq was no different as we now know that faulty intelligence was highlighted while warnings about that bad intelligence were swept under the carpet.

 

A conspiracy theory: The President and his neo-con handlers knowingly falsified intelligence (or more accurately, knowingly ignored warnings that the reliability of the source of the intelligence was seriously doubted) in order to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation in order to have access to that country's oil reserves via a puppet government who would gladly sign over the oil rights to American oil companiies in exchange for protection services, to keep them in power, provided by the U.S. military. IMHO.

 

That's crazy - just one of them looney conspiracy nuts - probably thinks there were bombs planted in the world trade centers, too.

[luke warm]

The President and his neo-con handlers knowingly falsified intelligence in order to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation in order to have access to that country's oil reserves via a puppet government who would gladly sign over the oil rights to American oil companiies in exchange for protection services, to keep them in power, provided by the U.S. military.

ok winston, you've made an affirmative statement... make your case that the president "knowingly" falsified intelligence... after you've done that, make your case that the motives were as you laid out... if you can't or won't, consider adding an "imho"

[mike777]

Only 2 Dems are for attacking Iran, I think not :P

 

Where does Hillary or Biden stand? How about General Kennedy?

 

I assume Bush has already pushed the button with the rest of the Republicans :D

[Winstonm]

The President and his neo-con handlers knowingly falsified intelligence in order to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation in order to have access to that country's oil reserves via a puppet government who would gladly sign over the oil rights to American oil companiies in exchange for protection services, to keep them in power, provided by the U.S. military.

ok winston, you've made an affirmative statement... make your case that the president "knowingly" falsified intelligence... after you've done that, make your case that the motives were as you laid out... if you can't or won't, consider adding an "imho"

O.K., Jimmy, fair engough.

 

(CBS) When no weapons of mass destruction surfaced in Iraq, President Bush insisted that all those WMD claims before the war were the result of faulty intelligence. But a former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller — a 26-year veteran of the agency — has decided to do something CIA officials at his level almost never do: Speak out.

 

He tells correspondent Ed Bradley the real failure was not in the intelligence community but in the White House. He says he saw how the Bush administration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit the president's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye to intelligence that did not.

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

"It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it’s an intelligence failure. It’s an intelligence failure. This was a policy failure," Drumheller tells Bradley.

 

Drumheller was the CIA's top man in Europe, the head of covert operations there, until he retired a year ago. He says he saw firsthand how the White House promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn’t:

 

"The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy."

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Tyler Drumheller

 

As CBS News reported, “barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq.” Former Bush counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke recounted vividly how, just after the attack, President Bush pressured him to find an Iraqi connection. In many ways, this was no surprise—as former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and another administration official confirmed, the White House was actually looking for a way to invade Iraq well before the terrorist attacks.

But such an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country required a public rationale. And so the Bush administration struck fear into the hearts of Americans about Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMD, starting with nuclear arms. In his first major address on the “Iraqi threat” in October 2002, President Bush invoked fiery images of mushroom clouds and mayhem, saying, “Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.”

 

Yet, before that speech, the White House had intelligence calling this assertion into question. A 1997 report by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—the agency whose purpose is to prevent nuclear proliferation—stated there was no indication Iraq ever achieved nuclear capability or had any physical capacity for producing weapons-grade nuclear material in the near future.

 

In February 2001, the CIA delivered a report to the White House that said: “We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programs.” The report was so definitive that Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a subsequent press conference, Saddam Hussein “has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.”

 

 

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war

How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches

By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb

Published: 07 January 2007

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

 

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

 

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

 

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled.

 

Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty

 

Now, all of this may just be complete coincidence - but then again, it may be something else entirely - IMHO.

[pbleighton]

"Where does Hillary or Biden stand? How about General Kennedy?:"

 

Can you show any of them as being on record in favor of an attack on Iran?

 

Peter

[mike777]

I do not know anyone on the record who wants to attack Iran

 

Heck do the Democrats want to bomb anyone on the record?

[Al_U_Card]

Cleveland, I believe.

[luke warm]

~~Now, all of this may just be complete coincidence - but then again, it may be something else entirely - IMHO.

ok, i'll make a statement about your post and you tell me whether i'm right or wrong... you replaced the original premise ("The President and his neo-con handlers knowingly falsified intelligence..."), stated by you, with another ("... the White House promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn’t...") stated by a former cia op... so those quotes don't really speak to your premise, do they?

 

since your premise wasn't really defended, i'll assume you have abaonded it... as for the motive for the actions taken, there's a difference between embarking on action A for reason B and in embarking on action A for reason C, but discovering along the way that reason B is now both beneficial and possible... in any event, you can't say that the motive for action A is reason B when you haven't shown action A to be true

 

i'm not saying that the cia op is wrong (that the administration accepted certain intelligence but not others), only that others might view the same set of circumstances in a different light... i would never say that a person *knowingly* falsified intelligence, imo that borders on libel, unless i was prepared to attempt a proof... i'd do it this way:

 

the president of iran wnats nuclear energy so that he can make weapons grade material, with the final end being a planned attack on israel and the west - imho

 

i could then defend my opinion as an opinion, not as a necessary truth

[Winstonm]

i'm not saying that the cia op is wrong (that the administration accepted certain intelligence but not others), only that others might view the same set of circumstances in a different light... i would never say that a person *knowingly* falsified intelligence, imo that borders on libel, unless i was prepared to attempt a proof... i'd do it this way:

 

the president of iran wnats nuclear energy so that he can make weapons grade material, with the final end being a planned attack on israel and the west - imho

 

i could then defend my opinion as an opinion, not as a necessary truth

 

Jimmy, once again you are right - I would lose any logic argument with you, for sure. :) And BTW, it's good to see you back. I did add a disclaimer of sorts - I added to the start: A conspiracy theory: I thought it obvious from the original post - from the added comment about conspiracy - that the post was conjecture and not intended as statement of fact. I also did not specify which president or in what time frame the actions occured - a ficticious president at some unknown time. But I am taking your advice anyway, and will add IMHO at the end - because that is all it is and I knew that at the time.

 

I also did not answer your other question so I will address that now. I have read before (but didn't feel like searching it out) that the administration was warned by the CIA that some of the intelligence came from a totally unreliable source but the WH elected to ignore that warning and present the intel as fact - now I ask you: if you are aware that the information you are publicly presenting is tarnished and your own agency says it is unreliable, have you knowingly falsified the information (not the document but the information being told to the public) by claiming it as fact? Perhaps that is too strong of wording - knowingly ignored warning that the intelligence was seriously doubted to be accurate - might be better?

[luke warm]

I did add a disclaimer of sorts - I added to the start: A conspiracy theory:

you're right, you did... my apologies

if you are aware that the information you are publicly presenting is tarnished and your own agency says it is unreliable, have you knowingly falsified the information (not the document but the information being told to the public) by claiming it as fact?

i don't know if i'd say it that way... i would agree that if those things are true then a person's selective use of that intelligence could call into question the objective nature of any decision flowing from it.. and i do agree that bush used the intelligence he wanted, that which justified a path he'd already chosen... i doubt he's the only president to do this (roosevelt comes to mind), but it doesn't make it right