Lee -

You did a better job of rebutting than me - even if the phrase "invading Iraq" was uttered at that meeting, there is no doubt it was simply a surprise to O'Neill, who would have had no prior knowledge of what contingency planning the Clinton administration had done. It's just been siezed upon by people like Gene to try to bend reality to fit a prejudicial notion they've constructed after the fact.

Cheers,
Daiwa

As a side note, I do find your typing atrocious and your spelling worse.

What?

Leauki, that was a personal aside to COL Gene. His spelling and typing errors are distracting us from his message. It was said outside the body of my response so as not to take away from the point I was trying to make. Or to "attack the messenger".

That pipe drean has cost this country 2,100 lives, 35,000 injuries and almost $300 billion dollars. Almost all of that was not to remove Saddam but the folly that followed for which Bush is responsible. Osama still has not been captured and Moslem terrorists are active all over the world including in Iraq.

C'mon, Col. Tukhachevsky, out with it. The whole point of your article seems to suggest that you didn't agree with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein--2,100 lives, 35,000 injuries and almost $300 billion dollars is almost completely due to the occupation and the silly notion that Iraqis can be turned into Swedes in anything less that a millennium (if they ever can).

How in January 2001 was Saddam part of 9/11 as Bush and Chemney claimed when it had not taken place yet?

Bush and Cheney DID NOT CLAIM that Saddam was part of 9/11 except in your deluded, Michael Mooreesque existence.

The decision to attack Iraq was based on intelligence reports that the previous administration and many prominent House and Senate members relied upon to determine that Saddam was a potential threat to the US. 12 years of sanctions and UN resolutions had not brought about compliance from this genocidal madman.

But, the truth's been given to you so many times I doubt MY tidbits would help.

Bush and Cheney DID NOT CLAIM that Saddam was part of 9/11 except in your deluded, Michael Mooreesque existence. The decision to attack Iraq was based on intelligence reports that the previous administration and many prominent House and Senate members relied upon to determine that Saddam was a potential threat to the US. 12 years of sanctions and UN resolutions had not brought about compliance from this genocidal madman. But, the truth's been given to you so many times I doubt MY tidbits would help.

Col gene's problem is that anyone who can say anything to make Bush look bad is good enough for him. It could come from the Sec Treasury, the Presidents brother, the guy who cleans the oval office, one of the FBI agents who follows the President around, heck it could come from one of the people who take one of those tourist walks around the White House. Col will believe them as long as it's against Bush. He doesn't need any physical evidence, he's 100% sure that these people have no reason to lie. I guess money is not that important to many people anymore.

Had enough yet col? People from "both" sides of the fence are beginning to see the lunacy coming from your keyboard.

The situation in Iraq and the way in which the terrorism continues is PROOF that the Bush policies are wrong. Statements like the Congress had the same information as Bush before the vote for war is a FLAT LIE! Congress did not, prior to the vote that allowed Bush to invade Iraq, have the intel that clearly showed that the Bush/Cheney arguments that Saddam was a danger to the US and Had WMD were not correct. Only the Intel that supported what Bush wanted to do was provided both Congress and the American People. The Intel that said the Bush arguments were not correct is just now comming to light. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence needs to learn ALL the intel, including the intel that disputed Bush/Cheney, that was available before they voted to allow Bush to Invade Iraq. The Senate needs to find out WHO prevented the Intel that did not support Bush to be known by Congress before the voted for War. That should be real interesting! If it is Bush and or Cheney, they should be impeached!

If it is Bush and or Cheney, they should be impeached!

COL Johnny One Note, how about being open-minded and saying that if it was some mid-level intel officer then that person should be let go? Why does it have to be Bush or Cheney for you to be satisfied?

Because of your blind utter disgust for all things GWB.

The situation in Iraq and the way in which the terrorism continues is PROOF that the Bush policies are wrong. Statements like the Congress had the same information as Bush before the vote for war is a FLAT LIE! Congress did not, prior to the vote that allowed Bush to invade Iraq, have the intel that clearly showed that the Bush/Cheney arguments that Saddam was a danger to the US and Had WMD were not correct. Only the Intel that supported what Bush wanted to do was provided both Congress and the American People. The Intel that said the Bush arguments were not correct is just now comming to light. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence needs to learn ALL the intel, including the intel that disputed Bush/Cheney, that was available before they voted to allow Bush to Invade Iraq. The Senate needs to find out WHO prevented the Intel that did not support Bush to be known by Congress before the voted for War. That should be real interesting! If it is Bush and or Cheney, they should be impeached!

Oh "really" col? Care to try an explain away this?

The Uranium Joe Wilson Didn't Mention By April 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein had stockpiled 500 tons of yellowcake uranium at his al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons development plant south of Baghdad. That intriguing little detail is almost never mentioned by the big media, who prefer to chant the mantra "Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction" while echoing Joseph Wilson's claim that "Bush lied" about Iraq seeking more of the nuclear material in Niger. The media's decision to put the Wilson-Plame affair back on the front burner, however, may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for President Bush - giving his administration a chance to resurrect an important debate they conceded far too easily about the weapons of mass destruction threat posed by Saddam Hussein. First, the facts - from a reliable critic of the White House, the New York Times, which covered the story long after the paper announced it was tightening its standards on WMD news out of Iraq. "The United States has informed an international agency that oversees nuclear materials that it intends to move hundreds of tons of uranium from a sealed repository south of Baghdad to a more secure place outside Iraq," the paper announced in a little-noticed May 2004 report. "The repository, at Tuwaitha, a centerpiece of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program until it was largely shut down after the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, holds more than 500 tons of uranium," the paper revealed, before insisting: "None of it [is] enriched enough to be used directly in a nuclear weapon." Well, almost none. The Times went on to report that amidst Saddam's yellowcake stockpile, U.S. weapons inspectors found "some 1.8 tons" that they "classified as low-enriched uranium." The paper conceded that while Saddam's nearly 2 tons of partially enriched uranium was "a more potent form" of the nuclear fuel, it was "still not sufficient for a weapon." Consulted about the low-enriched uranium discovery, however, Ivan Oelrich, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Associated Press that if it was of the 3 percent to 5 percent level of enrichment common in fuel for commercial power reactors, the 1.8 tons could be used to produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear bomb. And Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Times that the low-enriched uranium could be useful to a nation with nuclear ambitions. "A country like Iran could convert that into weapons-grade material with a lot fewer centrifuges than would be required with natural uranium," he explained. Luckily, Iraq didn't have even the small number of centrifuges necessary to get the job done. Or did it? The physicist tapped by Saddam to run his centrifuge program says that after the first Gulf War, the program was largely dismantled. But it wasn't destroyed. In fact, according to what he wrote in his 2004 book, "The Bomb in My Garden," Dr. Mahdi Obeidi told U.S. interrogators: "Saddam kept funding the IAEC [Iraq Atomic Energy Commission] from 1991 ... until the war in 2003." "I was developing the centrifuge for the weapons" right through 1997, he revealed. And after that, Dr. Obeidi said, Saddam ordered him under penalty of death to keep the technology available to resume Iraq's nuke program at a moment's notice. Dr. Obeidi said he buried "the full set of blueprints, designs - everything to restart the centrifuge program - along with some critical components of the centrifuge" under the garden of his Baghdad home. "I had to maintain the program to the bitter end," he explained. All the while the Iraqi physicist was aware that he held the key to Saddam's continuing nuclear ambitions. "The centrifuge is the single most dangerous piece of nuclear technology," Dr. Obeidi says in his book. "With advances in centrifuge technology, it is now possible to conceal a uranium enrichment program inside a single warehouse." Consider: 500 tons of yellowcake stored at Saddam's old nuclear weapons plant, where he'd managed to partially enrich 1.8 tons. And the equipment and blueprints that could enrich enough uranium to make a bomb stored away for safekeeping. And all of it at the Iraqi dictator's disposal. If the average American were aware of these undisputed facts, the debate over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would have been decided long ago - in President Bush's favor. One more detail that Mr. Wilson and his media backers don't like to discuss: There's a reason Niger was such a likely candidate for Saddam's uranium shopping spree. Responding to the firestorm that erupted after Wilson's July 2003 column, Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters: "In case people should think that the whole idea of a link between Iraq and Niger was some invention, in the 1980s we know for sure that Iraq purchased round about 270 tons of uranium from Niger."

At the risk of being as tiresome as Gene, it should at least be pointed out that no intelligence finding has ever had 100% concordance from all available sources - we pay the CIA billions of dollars a year to sift & sort the wheat from the chaff & do its best to provide reliable estimates to the administration in support of its foreign policy and in the interests of the defense of the nation. It was apparently the collective judgment of the CIA that the pieces that didn't fit were the less likely to be correct than the more extensive evidence that supported their conclusions and the conclusions of multiple other national intelligence agencies. Of course, some intelligence was discounted, "ignored" as Gene puts it. However, the case can more logically be made that it was the consequence of the ordinary conduct of its business, not some nefarious plot to deceive.

It is not, nor has it ever been, the job of Congress to review all raw intelligence a priori and make intelligence estimates itself - Congress has oversight responsibility only but still has the authority to demand from the CIA whatever it requires in the discharge of that responsibility, including access to raw intelligence in cases where Congress has questions or doubts. Congress had ample opportunity to question the intelligence before the authority to invade was granted.

Cheers,
Daiwa