Pre-War Intelligence a 'Hoax on the American People'
 

[url=http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060203/nyf073.html?.v=35:cfa00]Link[/url:cfa00]

[quote:cfa00]Powell's Former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson Calls Pre-War Intelligence a 'Hoax on the American People' Tonight on PBS Program 'NOW'

Friday February 3, 12:19 pm ET

NEW YORK, Feb. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- In an interview airing tonight on the PBS weekly newsmagazine NOW, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson makes the startling claim that much of Powell's landmark speech to the United Nations laying out the Bush Administration's case for the Iraq war was false.

"I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council," says Wilkerson, who helped prepare the address.

The NOW report, which airs days before the third anniversary of Powell's speech, examines the serious doubts that existed about the key evidence being used by the American government at the very time Powell's speech was being planned and delivered.

"I recall vividly the Secretary of State walking into my office," Wilkerson tells NOW. "He said: 'I wonder what will happen if we put half a million troops on the ground in Iraq and comb the country from one end to the other and don't find a single weapon of mass destruction?'" In fact, no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

NOW, hosted by David Brancaccio, airs Friday nights at 8:30 on PBS (check local listings).[/quote:cfa00]

Thought this was common knowledge?

I think a lot of people will argue the fact that intelligence said there was WMD in Iraq, and when they got there there wasn't any, thus the intelligence was bad. I think this is the route most people go by.

Wilkerson is saying that they manipulated intelligence to justify the war, they didn't just get it wrong. I think there's a pretty big difference between the two.

the whole discussion implicates that Cheney and Rumsfield were feeding and massaging the bullshit and that Powell didnt have a clue.

Interesting read.

Guys should read the assassins gate, almost finished reading it...brilliant book..


p.s stfu about book jokes nyck

'


NO no.. THEY shipped them all out on trucks right before the war lol rolleyes: happy:

actually, they've been said to have shipped them out on planes.

either way, I don't care, the WMDs are second priority for me. The killing of innocent citizens by the Iraqi government was the main thing for me, I think we should have gone to help regardless of WMDs.

The United States has killed thousands upon thousands of civilians. I don't see the difference between Saddam killing people and other militaries killing people regardless if it is accidental.

by a former General trying to sell a book... ed: . Why don't we just take Ferenheit 911 as 100 percent factaul while we are at it... rolleyes:

the intention behind the act makes it entirely different. Killing people on accident in an attempt to help them is different than killing them because they didn't vote for you, or you want to test out your new chemical weapons. Besides, I'm sure Saddam killed more innocent people than the number of innocent people who have been killed accidentally by US forces in Iraq.

If the United States didn't care about civilians, they wouldn't have spent billions of dollars to develop and build smart bombs.



[quote="Short Hand":cb7ad]by a former General trying to sell a book... ed: . Why don't we just take Ferenheit 911 as 100 percent factaul while we are at it... rolleyes:[/quote:cb7ad]


that's pretty funny considering the source at the beginning of this thread is of a similar type.

[quote=c312]the intention behind the act makes it entirely different. Killing people on accident in an attempt to help them is different than killing them because they didn't vote for you, or you want to test out your new chemical weapons. Besides, I'm sure Saddam killed more innocent people than the number of innocent people who have been killed accidentally by US forces in Iraq.

If the United States didn't care about civilians, they wouldn't have spent billions of dollars to develop and build smart bombs.




that's pretty funny considering the source at the beginning of this thread is of a similar type.[/quote:3809a]

100000 civilians have died in the war....
Thousands died in Haiti after SOA gradautes overthrew Aristide....
Thousands have died in South America, and around the world because of SOA gradautes.........
Iran and the Shah ring a bell ?....

Beleive it or not there is a very fine line between the what is called good and bad.

I believe

1 they (WMDs) were shipped out

2 WMDs were not "needed" in order to attack

3 he didnt follow through with the promises made at the end of the Gulf War and that ALONE is enough to invade (with the UNs blessing-more on them later)

4 he (sadaam) would torture, rape and kill as he felt. No ryme or reason, the people of Iraq are better off today than they were before we came

5 the UN is a useless org with no teeth, the world knows they can snub them anytime because they will never back up what they say




PS Im betting the wistle blower will "disappear"

Yeah they are better off with the civil war going on now. rolleyes:

Also I'm glad to see the money being spent there is going to good use. oOo:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/ ... 2378.shtml

Does Wilkerson have a book coming out? He's being interviewed on something he and people around him did, not what he thinks happened.

Anyway, i'd like to know why those who think WMD were shipped out do think that way.

there was another thread about this about the pilot who said he had shipped wmds out on planes. Also, they found some dismantled parts of rockets in Denmark or something, then there's the fact that they had WMDs after the last war, were ordered to disarm them, and now cannot account for the disarmament of the missing weapons.

The intel was bad because it is false. The decision to go to war was made before the intelligence was there to support it. The intelligence was fabricated to justify the war, thus bad intelligence. Much like the fact the decision to invade Afghanistan was made months before 9/11.

...? oOo:
, they would have loved to, but would not have had any backing. Hell Clinton and Bush were chastised by some for not looking at the info in hand about al qaeda and not attacking untill provoked

"During the public hearings on March 23-24, it was Kerrey who adopted the most right-wing, pro-war stance, repeatedly suggesting in his questions and comments that both the Clinton and Bush administrations blundered by failing to invade Afghanistan before September 11, despite the admitted lack of public support for such an adventure."

Christ there would have been as much outrage for that venture as there is for Iraq.

Now I could believe that the decsion to invade Iraq was made before 9/11, but not afghanistan. I mean in all intents and purposes I think the only thing that the normal citizen of the US knew about afghanistan was that Rambo fought along side then against the russians in Rambo 3.

the 9/11 attacks themselves worked to nudge along support for the war on afghanistan.

IMO Afghanistan could basically be seen as 1st a pain in the ass hinderance to the war on iraq and then a basis for reasoning to do so.

[quote:82849]A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks.

Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.[/quote:82849]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm
http://www.indiareacts.com/archivefeatu ... ctg=policy
http://www.janes.com/security/internati ... _1_n.shtml

[quote="Tony Blair":82849] "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11."
Tony Blair. July 17, 2002 [Guardian][/quote:82849]

[url="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1036571,00.html"]http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story ... 71,00.html[/url]

I added to my post above.

Like you said.

the intelligence was there, Bin Laden was connected to the bombing of embassys overseas, Clintona and Bush would have LOVED to go after OBL, but there was no way that the US would have had the support to attack afghanistan prior to 9/11

I still say Iraq was option 1 in the Bush administration and Al Qaeda brought the shit storm on themselves by bringing its self to the fore front with the 9/11 attacks and pushing Iraq to the backburner.

I see Clinton/Kerry and bush two or three sides of the same coin.

Clinton shot a cruise missile at an aspirin factory to take the heat off himself and Kerry and Bush's voting patterns are practically identical. They are (were) protrayed as opposites, however I don't think there is really much difference between the two. Kerry and Bush both voted for the war, not to mention Skull & Bones. They have the same background.

The difference as I see it between a position like yours and a position like mine is you see the US trying to stop Al Qaeda before the attacks, then the attacks happen and then the US has justification to go forward. I see it as not a coincidence that the US wanted into Afghanistan/Iraq/Iran and then 9/11 happened.

1) Does the president not vote?
2&3) Reference Downing Street memos.
4) Can't deny many of those who go through S&B as well as other many freemason units are in extremly high places areound the world.

I'd rather not have a president who's sworn a blood oath to the devil or whatever god they worship. Migh be a conflict of interest. Oath to the clan, or oath to uphold the constitution.

I don't understand the significance of the DS memo

Fuck.. Powell could come out and tell us all this was a scam.. AND YOU still would be a beleiver to the end... This thread went in an akward direction. rolleyes:

[quote="Short Hand":ac468]Fuck.. Powell could come out and tell us all this was a scam.. AND YOU still would be a beleiver to the end... This thread went in an akward direction. rolleyes:[/quote:ac468]

I think its been pretty much agreed - that you know fuck-all when it comes to knowing fuck-all. . .so why do you INSIST on picking up after NINTY's scraps? Seriously - has there ever been a SINGLE time youve argued something on your own without having someone co-sign for you?

I mean, i just read the Downing street memos and I'm not sure what it says, it doesn't seem to be that significant to me.

I guess it's pretty easy to justify either side of any topic when the response is always "that guy is lying" or deny things ever taking place.

Or play the "lets label this person an idiot game" rolleyes: . TGB will never change.

your telling me you believe that the US orchestrated the 9/11 attacks and killed thousands, just to have a reason to go to war with Afghanistan oOo:

seriously.

DS memo was minutes taken by Matthew Rycroft who is the foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair.

Not just for Afghanistan, but in essence, yes. The policy is in PNAC.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/Rebui ... fenses.pdf

[quote:ea23d]"the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."[/quote:ea23d]

PNAC's members include Cheney Rumsfeld Wolfowitz as well as a number of other Bush administration officials as well as Jeb Bush.

Another important aspect is Exectutive Order W199I:
http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=12165

I could go into tens or hundreds of different aspects on 9/11, but i'll leave that for people to do themselves if they want to.

David Ray Griffin breaks down the way people think about the attacks into four categories which I think are very appropriate. You just have to figure out where you are:
1) The US was totally blindsighted by the attack and had no prior knowledge.
2) The US did not know of the attack, but are now using it to their advantage in foreign policy and in the US itself.
3) The US knew the attacks were coming and allowed them to happen, much like pearl harbour, in order to garner the support of the citizens to carry out certain goals.
4) The US was complicit in organizing and carrying out the attacks.

There is a multitude of evidence out there, you just have to want to find it.

I would recommend watching any of David Ray Griffins speeches. They are anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour long and he deals directly with what the Government's official story is through the 9/11 Comission report. His speeches can be found on most torrent sites.

The problem with President Fuckstick's administration is he does whatever the fuck he wants regardless of outcome. He's a reckless texan with a vocabulary problem. You've seen his exit strategy. He does'nt have one.

ninty, you could find evidence of anything if you look hard enough for it. I recently looked at a website (http://www.911wasalie.com) and they had photos and stuff that supposedly showed the commercial airliner that crashed into the WTC firing a missile before it hit. I didn't see a damn thing in the "conclusive photographic proof." I don't think that searching through the internet to find a group of idiots beleiving something because they want to beleive in something against the mainstream or for whatever other reason is a wise use of the internet.

There is a lot of misinformation out there. Personally, I don't believe in that particular theory. When I started out researching and reading, it took a while for me to decide what was true and what was false. What drove me was that somehting was wrong with that day. For some people it's Building 7 collapsing without a plane hitting it. For others, it's the seamingly stand down on NORAD and other air defense systems. Some ask questions, and some accept what their being told as truth. It is important to know the truth because so many decisions have been made as a result of that day that have affected hundreds of thousands or millions of lives. Heck, you probably know of someone who is serving overseas.

I came across this in regards to the DSM:

[url=http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002215.htm:8768e]Link[/url:8768e]

[url=http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/finalreport.pdf:8768e]"The Constitution in Crisis."[/url:8768e]

[quote:8768e]When the Downing Street Minutes were first published by the Sunday London Times, shortly before the 2005 British election, the Blair Administration chose not to deny their authenticity. Shortly after the Minutes were released, sources within both the Bush and Blair Administrations confirmed their accuracy to the press. A former senior US official told Knight Ridder that the Downing Street Minutes were "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired." (Warren P. Strobel & John Walcott, Downing Street Memo Indicates Bush Made Intelligence Fit Iraq Policy, KNIGHT RIDDER, May 5, 2005.)[/quote:8768e]

[quote:8768e]Two senior British officials, who asked not to be further identified because of the sensitivity of the material, told Newsweek in separate interviews that they had no reason to question the authenticity of the Downing Street Minutes. (Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball, From Downing Street to Capitol Hill, NEWSWEEK.COM, June 17, 2005, [url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8234762/site/newsweek/:8768e]available here[/url:8768e])[/quote:8768e]

[quote:8768e]By mid-July 2002, eight months before the war began, President Bush had decided to "remove Saddam, through military action."
This has been proven true -- on March 20, 2003, the U.S. military invaded Iraq and follow-up aspects of the Downing Street Minutes bear out that this decision was made well in advance of the war. In addition to the wealth of verification in [url=http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/section3a.pdf:8768e]Sections III(A)(1), (2), and (4) of Conyers' Report,[/url:8768e] and in particular as noted in the previous section, we know that in early August 2002, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair spoke by telephone. According to a White House official who has studied the transcript of the phone call, "The way it read was that, come what may, Saddam was going to go; they said they were going forward, they were going to take out the regime, and they were doing the right thing. Blair did not need any convincing. There was no 'come on Tony, we've got to get you on board.' I remember reading it then and thinking, O.K., now I know what we're going to be doing for the next year." (Bryan Burrough, Eugenia Peretz, David Rose, & David Wise, The Path to War, VANITY FAIR, May 1, 2004, at 228.)[/quote:8768e]

[quote:8768e]In March 2003, Tony Blair reportedly said, "[l]eft to himself, Bush would have gone to war in January. No, not January, but back in September." (ROBIN COOK, THE POINT OF DEPARTURE, Simon & Schuster, 2003).[/quote:8768e]

[quote:8768e]Bush had decided to "justify" the war "by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD."
This statement is borne out by the entire "marketing campaign," which fixated on these twin justifications [url=http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/section3a.pdf:8768e](see Section III(A)(4) of Conyers' Report).[/url:8768e] For example, the Bush Administration formed the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) in August 2002 to persuade the public of Saddam's supposed threat and to market the war. The Administration waited to introduce the WHIG's product to the public until September 2002, because, as White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told The New York Times in an unusually candid interview, "[y]ou don't introduce new products in August." (Elisabeth Bumiller, Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 7, 2002, at A1.)[/quote:8768e]

[quote:8768e]Already "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
The statement that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" is confirmed by the multi-layered effort by the Administration to pressure officials within the Administration to find links between Saddam and September 11 and to manipulate intelligence officials and agencies into overstating WMD threats [url=http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/section3b.pdf:8768e](see Section III(B) of Conyers' Report).[/url:8768e] [/quote:8768e]

[quote:8768e]Many at the top of the administration "had no patience" with "the UN route."
This statement is consistent with the realities of the Bush Administration's intentions at the time. For example, Vice President Cheney's stated opinion was that there was no need to seek any approval from the UN to invade. He has stated: "A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with UN resolutions. On the contrary, there is great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow 'back in the box.'" (Mark Danner, The Secret Way to War, N.Y. REV. OF BOOKS, June 9, 2005, [url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18034:8768e]available here.[/url:8768e]) [/quote:8768e]

[quote:8768e]"There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath of military action."
Unfortunately, this statement has been verified by events following the war (see [url=http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/section2.pdf:8768e]Sections II[/url:8768e] and III(A)(3), (4) of Conyers' Report). Among other things, in an ironic assessment of the events to follow, Vice President Dick Cheney made an appearance on Meet the Press and stated that the war was not going to be long, costly or bloody because "we will be greeted as liberators." (Meet the Press: Interview with Vice-President Dick Cheney, NBC television broadcast, Mar. 16, 2003, [url=http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/s:8768e]available here.[/url:8768e]) [/quote:8768e]

[quote:8768e]The US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime.
The statement that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to pressure Iraq has been subsequently confirmed by numerous accounts ([url=http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/section3a.pdf:8768e]see Section III(A) of Conyers' Report[/url:8768e]). As reported in the Sunday London Times, in May 2002, with a conditional agreement in place with Britain for war, the US and UK began to conduct a bombing campaign in Iraq described by British and US officials as "spikes of activity" designed to put pressure on the Iraqi regime. In his autobiography "American Soldier," retired U.S. General Tommy Franks, who led the 2003 invasion of Iraq, invoked the "spikes" phrase as far back as 2001: "I'm thinking in terms of spikes, Mr. Secretary," he wrote, referencing a conversation with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in December 2001, "spurts of activity followed by periods of inactivity. We want the Iraqis to become accustomed to military expansion, and then apparent contraction." (GEN. TOMMY FRANKS, AMERICAN SOLDIER 366, Regan Books, 2004.)

The bombing campaign was initiated a full ten months before the Bush Administration determined that all diplomatic means had been exhausted and six months before Congressional authorization for the use of force. A total of 21,736 sorties were flown over southern Iraq between June 2002 and the beginning of the war. According to a document found by Larisa Alexandrovna of RawStory.com, Lieutenant-General T Michael Moseley said that the "spikes of activity" were part of a covert air war. According to Moseley, the attacks, "laid the foundation" for the war. (John Byrne, U.S. changed Iraq policy to begin air strikes months before war, Rawstory.com, [url=http://rawstory.com/news/2005/U.S._changed_Iraq_policy_to_begin_airstrikes_month s_before_0630.html:8768e]available here.[/url:8768e])[/quote:8768e]

[quote:8768e]The British believed "[w]e should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."
The initiative of the British to go back to the UN to force an "ultimatum" has also been proven true ([url=http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/section3a.pdf:8768e]see Section III(A)(5) of Conyers' Report[/url:8768e]). The U.S. and Britain asked for UN authorization to demand the reintroduction of weapons inspectors, which they received on November 8, 2002.[/quote:8768e]

I still don't think it explicitly implicates anything. It is like a strategic plan to get people to support and vote for the Iraq war, it's like a plan before the war. It doesn't seem to say anything about making stuff up, although it may seem like it does at times, but only if read in a different tone. It sounds like they have made a decision, and then they laid out how to put it into action and get people to understand and go with it too.

The only thing that is of note to me is the "fixing" details around the war, that sounds bad, but it doesn't explicitly say anything was being manipulated, it could mean that they were simply gathering information to present in an argument to support the war.

definately not reading 63 pages...