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On March 19, the night before the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Regiment, crossed the Iraqi border, Marines in Fox Company, drawn mainly from Utah and Nevada, learned they would not have armored vehicles equipped with powerful weapons. Instead, they would ride into combat in soft-sided trucks with few heavy arms.
"It was probably one of the scariest things I had ever been told," Cpl. Scott Lee of Ogden wrote to his wife. "Everyone was freaking out. I had Lance Cpl. Arnold give me a blessing, and he asked for one in return."
They were short on ammunition, hand grenades, signal devices, chemical weapon detectors and heavy guns. The Marines had to share night vision goggles and body armor. They ended up stripping needed equipment from wounded and injured comrades. They had no spare parts to repair weapons, radios, trucks or Humvees. Until the end of the fighting, they didn't even have spare tires.
Because they did not have a satellite radio, their headquarters frequently lost contact with higher command -- contact necessary for learning the evolving war strategy and in calling for airstrikes, artillery or medical evacuation helicopters.
At one point, food became so scarce that gunners held up signs to passing Army combat engineers scrawled with the words "Will Shoot for Food."
Fox Company also was short on ammunition for its M240 Gulf machine guns, the largest weapon the infantry can carry. There were so few colored signal flares that the company scrapped plans to use them. Some Marines stuffed bullets into their pockets because they had no ammunition pouches. And the company had only 75 hand grenades for its 200 Marines, who are trained to carry two to four grenades each.
Compounding equipment shortages were the Pennsylvania Truck Company drivers, who arrived in Kuwait to ferry the 2/23rd into combat with no night vision goggles and no ceramic flak jacket inserts, designed to stop rifle and machine gun rounds.
The Marines were so famished from hauling around more than 100 pounds of personal gear and digging foxholes that they begged food from passing Army combat engineers. The engineers tossed them extra MREs.
Still, Marines picked through trash piles, looking for portions the Army troops hadn't eaten. They usually found dehydrated cream and sugar packets intact. They gulped down the contents dry or mixed them with water for a concoction of calories and protein.
"We acted like Iraqi children,"
said Lance Cpl. Brent Bower of Salt Lake City. "We were hungry."
With the latest Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll
showing that 79 percent of Americans believe that "the war would be justified
even 'if the U.S. does not find conclusive evidence that Iraq has weapons
of mass destruction,'" it seems, for the moment at least, that we don't
mind being lied to — as long as we continue to feel good about ourselves
and our role in the world. Truth isn't nearly as important as is the oft-staged
and contrived mythology of America saving the day.
(Invincible Ignorance)
Referring to the administration's strategy
of waiting until fall to begin its public-relations offensive, [White House
Chief of Staff Andrew] Card said, "From a marketing point of view, you
don't introduce new products in August [2002]."
(Proof of Slanting)
The Bush Administration has resorted to name
calling to express his displeasure against France and Germany.
Donald Rumsfeld referred to these countries (and others that are like-minded)
as “Old Europe,” implying that they are weak, helpless, and insignificant,
as they were perceived to be during the world wars.
(Name Calling)
For the past two years, asked to square oceans of red ink with campaign pledges to balance the budget, President Bush has insisted that he left himself three outs: war, economic downturn and national emergency, and, "Lucky me. I hit the trifecta."
The Truth About Intelligence in Iraq: “Bring
It On”, Patrick G. Roy, Cleveland Free Times, August 13, 2003
http://www.freetimes.com/issues/1116/op-ed.html
Time magazine reports that in March 2002,
President George W. Bush met with a group of senators at the White House.
He seemed little interested in debating what to do about Iraq. Instead,
he said simply, "F--- Saddam, we're taking him out."
(Appeal to Force,
Invincible Ignorance)
Bush claims that he used every last effort
to avoid war, yet he turned down two reasonable last-minute compromises
offered by Italy and Chile to avert a last minute impasse over a second
United Nations resolution.
(Falsification)
(CNN) -- The Bush administration began planning to use U.S. troops to invade Iraq within days after the former Texas governor entered the White House three years ago, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told CBS News' 60 Minutes.
"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill told CBS, according to excerpts released Saturday by the network. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap."
[Co-author Ron] Suskind cited a Pentagon document titled "Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," which, he said, outlines areas of oil exploration. "It talks about contractors around the world from ... 30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq."
In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting asked why Iraq should be invaded.
"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,'" O'Neill said.
O'Neill also said in the book that President
Bush "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people" during Cabinet
meetings.
(Appeal to Force,
Invincible Ignorance, Slanting, Dogmatism, Non sequitur)
The Pentagon group insisted on doing it its
way because it had a visionary strategy that it hoped would transform Iraq
into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the Persian Gulf oil
trade and encircle Iran with U.S. friends and allies. The problem was that
officials at the State Department and CIA thought the vision was badly
flawed and impractical, so the Pentagon planners simply excluded their
rivals from involvement.
(Stacking the Deck,
Slanting, Invincible Ignorance)
During the presidential debates, Bush was asked to describe his foreign policy. He answered that the United States would have a “humble [foreign] policy.” Yet, within the first few months of his administration …
Washington has pledged or provided new military aid — from training, equipment or, most significantly, advisers -- to some two dozen countries, among them Armenia, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, the Philippines, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Yemen, not to mention Afghanistan, where the United States intends to build a national army.
Over the same period, Bush walked away from
global negotiations on biological weapons control, withdrew the United
States from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, widely considered a
cornerstone of international arms-control, and proposed increasing the
defense budget in 2003 by $48 billion. The increase alone is greater than
the amount any of Washington's NATO allies devotes to its military in an
entire year.
(Falsification,
Distortion, Appeal to Reward)
"Both Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, and Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's closest adviser, made clear before September 11, 2001, that Saddam Hussein was no threat — to America, Europe or the Middle East."
"Two months later, [July 2001] Condoleezza Rice also described a weak, divided and militarily defenceless Iraq. "Saddam does not control the northern part of the country," she said. "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
Hussein and the Iraqi military are weak and
have been effectively contained over the past 12 years. Hussein
has not attacked any nation since 1991, and …. Bush argues that Hussein
can attack the United States with weapons of mass destruction, yet Hussein’s
farthest-reaching missile can barely reach Israel, let alone a trip across
the Atlantic. Iraq’s longest flight of an unmanned drone is said
to be only 200 miles (not the 11,000+ miles necessary to reach New York).
North Korea has kicked out U.N. weapons inspectors, restarted their nuclear
missile program, threatened immediate nuclear war on South Korea, China,
and the United States, and reportedly has missiles that can reach Seattle,
San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The Defense Department labeled these
threats as “inconsequential” and “not even on the radar.” The White
House has not proven that Iraq is the greater threat to the world or America.
(Falsification,
Distortion, Slippery Slope, Scare Tactics)
In fact, Saddam is no better or worse than
any number of dictators past or present. General Augusto Pinochet, Ferdinand
Marcos, General Suharto, Anastasio Somoza, Pol Pot -- these are a few of
the bloody dictators responsible for the death of literally millions of
people (Pol Pot was responsible for the slaughter of 1.5 million people,
Suharto 500,000 or more). These are dictators the United States either
supported directly or indirectly over the years.
(Distortion, Red
Herring, Straw Man, Dogmatism, Invincible Ignorance)
Hussein has been compared to Hitler, but this
comparison is very poor. Even the US allied with Stalin, who executed
20 million of his own people.
(Moral Equivalence,
Hasty Generalization, False Analogy)
Hussein isn’t even the worst dictator in the
world! The enthusiasm for the war with Iraq seems at odds with the
level of interest in wiping out other world dictators.
(Slanting, Appeal
to Force, Dogmatism, Double Standard)
Hussein is a terrible dictator, having 200,000
citizens murdered over the past 20 years, but most of these violations
occurred in 1985, when he gassed the Kurds living on reservations in northern
Iraq. If Bush’s argument is valid, then it should have been Bush’s
first act as President in January 2001. Why wait 18 years before
crying “foul”?
(Non sequitur)
"With those attacks" on Sept. 11, Bush said,
"the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States.
And war is what they got."
"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein
was involved with Sept. 11," Bush said, definitively knocking down a link
that Bush's critics charge he and his administration have intimated and
benefited from in prosecuting the war on Iraq.
(Falsification,
Overgeneralization, Distortion)
Rice, appearing on ABC's "Nightline" Tuesday
night, added, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction
or control of 9/11."
(Falsification)
President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, said.: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."
FACT: No evidence of this has ever been leaked
or produced. Colin Powell told the U.N. this alleged training took place
in a camp in northern Iraq. To his great embarrassment, the area he indicated
was later revealed to be outside Iraq's control and patrolled by Allied
war planes.
(Falsification,
Distortion, Dogmatism)
"We know [Iraq] had a great deal to do with terrorism in general and with Al Qaeda in particular and we know a great many of [Osama] bin Laden's key lieutenants are now trying to organize in cooperation with old loyalists from the Saddam regime " Wolfowitz told ABC on this year's 9/11 anniversary.
We know nothing of the sort, of course, and
the next day Wolfowitz was forced to admit it. He told Associated Press
that his remarks referred not to a "great many" of Bin Laden's lieutenants
but rather to a single Jordanian, Abu Musab Zarqawi. "[I] should have been
more precise," Wolfowitz admitted.
(Falsification,
Equivocation, Distortion)
Saddam Hussein is a sworn enemy of Al-Qaeda due to his oppression of Muslim fundamentalism in Iraq and his insistence on running a secular state.
Faith-Based Intelligence, Gary Leupp, Counter
Punch, July 26, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp07262003.html
The most egregious piece of disinformation
circulated by the administration was that al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were
in cahoots. An intimate operational connection was highly unlikely, and
the Bush charge immediately raised the eyebrows of Middle East scholars
aware of the historical mutual hatred between the fundamentalist terrorist
group and the secular Baathist state. But (banking on ignorance and anti-Arab
racism), the [White House was] able to blur the distinction between the
two and, as Rice put it, "exploit new opportunities" to implement longstanding
plans for regime change in Iraq.
(Falsification,
Distortion, Invincible Ignorance)
Hiltermann insisted that Washington's pre-war claims of ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda still remained entirely unconvincing. "I see no information that links al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein's people before the war, and the Americans never provided any hard evidence, so it is an alliance that postdates the war, not predates it," he said.
Professor Barry Buzan, international security specialist at the London School of Economics, agreed. "I find it quite plausible that with the Americans having made such a big target of themselves in Iraq, an alliance should come into existence now purely on opportunistic grounds," he said. "But I see no evidence of such a connection before the war and those people who made political mileage out of there being one have shut up."
Both analysts concurred that the US-led occupation
had turned Iraq into a magnet for al-Qaeda. "Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda-like
groups have every reason for going into Iraq - it's a perfect recruiting
ground, the Americans are there as a target and they have got the world's
press," said Buzan. (Counterproductive Result)
George Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati: "The Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons."
Experts Review, Poke Holes in Case for
War, Bob Kemper CHICAGO TRIBUNE Sunday, August 10, 2003
http://www.statesman.com/asection/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/news_f353ee540662109e1071.html;COXnetJSessionID=18RD1aHTahlw24mGnqmHS2Zgc1KPed591eany7baGb8IezRnwQft!461918832?urac=n&urvf=10651446439250.00372943350280186
Bush said in October that Iraq had 30,000 liters of anthrax and "other deadly biological agents."
The Other Lies of George Bush, David Korn,
The Nation, September 26, 2003
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031013&s=corn
And two days before launching the war, Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Yet former deputy CIA director Richard Kerr,
who is conducting a review of the prewar intelligence, has said that intelligence
was full of qualifiers and caveats, and based on circumstantial and inferential
evidence. That is, it was not no-doubt stuff.
(Slippery Slope
, Distortion, Slanting, Falsification, Invincible Ignorance)
"There is no doubt'' that Saddam Hussein ''has chemical weapons stocks,'' said Powell to FOX News on September 8, 2002.
Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told about Iraq,
Christopher Scheer, AlterNet, June 27, 2003
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16274
Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5, 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets."
FACT: Putting aside the glaring fact that
not one drop of this massive stockpile has been found, the United States'
own intelligence reports show that these stocks – if they existed – were
well past their use-by date and therefore useless as weapon fodder.
(Distortion, Falsification,
Slippery Slope)
And after the major fighting was done, Bush declared, "We found the weapons of mass destruction." But he could only point to two tractor-trailers that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded were mobile bioweapons labs. Other experts--including the DIA's own engineering experts--disagreed with this finding.
Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told about Iraq,
Christopher Scheer, AlterNet, June 27, 2003
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16274
According to the British, and much to Prime
Minister Tony Blair's embarrassment, the trailers are actually exactly
what Iraq said they were; facilities to fill weather balloons, sold to
them by the British themselves.
(Distortion, Falsification)
President Bush, Oct. 7: "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States."
FACT: Said drones can't fly more than 300
miles, and Iraq is 6,000 miles from the U.S. coastline. Furthermore, Iraq's
drone-building program wasn't much more advanced than your average model
plane enthusiast.
(Distortion, Falsification)
And isn't a "manned aerial vehicle" just a
scary way to say "plane"?
(Loaded Language)
It was later discovered that much of the first dossier was plagiarized from a Californian student's PhD thesis, which had been posted on the Internet.
"The mistake was to take part of the [thesis] article and put that into the draft that was being prepared without attribution," Campbell told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee.
"We assumed this was ... government sourced material," he said. "It should not have happened the way it did."
Ex-aide: Blair Lied Iraq Had Weapons ,
Warren Hoge, New York Times, October 6, 2003
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/1003/06blair.html
Prime Minister Tony Blair conceded privately that Iraq did not have quickly deployable weapons of mass destruction as the British government was claiming as justification for war, says Robin Cook, a former foreign minister.
He says Blair also made it clear to him in a conversation two weeks before combat began that he did not believe Saddam Hussein's weapons posed a "real and present danger" to Britain.
An intelligence dossier published in September 2002 argued that Iraq had unconventional weapons that could be used within 45 minutes of an order being given.
Cook said he had no reason to doubt Blair
believed the claim at the time it was made. But he said that in their conversation
on March 5, Blair told him the weapons were only battlefield munitions
and could not be assembled by Hussein for quick use because of "all the
effort he has put into concealment."
(Falsification,
Distortion, Scare Tactics, Slippery Slope)
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press: "We know where [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.”
FACT: Needless to say, no such weapons were
found, not to the east, west, south or north, somewhat or otherwise.
(Overgeneralization,
Evading the Issue, Circular Reasoning, Invincible Ignorance)
The U.S. supplied the country with military
intelligence, weapons, and biological and chemical agents throughout the
1980s, when the majority of the atrocities the U.S. currently cites as
justification for war occurred.
By the summer of 1983 Iran had been reporting Iraqi use of using chemical weapons for some time.
Soon thereafter, Donald Rumsfeld was dispatched to the Middle East as a presidential envoy. His December 1983 tour of regional capitals included Baghdad, where he was to establish "direct contact between an envoy of President Reagan and President Saddam Hussein," while emphasizing "his close relationship" with the president. Rumsfeld met with Saddam, and the two discussed regional issues of mutual interest, shared enmity toward Iran and Syria, and the U.S.'s efforts to find alternative routes to transport Iraq's oil…. Rumsfeld made no reference to chemical weapons, according to detailed notes on the meeting.
Rumsfeld also met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, and the two agreed, "the U.S. and Iraq shared many common interests." Later, Rumsfeld was assured by the U.S. interests section that Iraq's leadership had been "extremely pleased" with the visit, and that "Tariq Aziz had gone out of his way to praise Rumsfeld as a person."
Reagan administration did not deviate from
its determination that Iraq was to serve as the instrument to prevent an
Iranian victory. Chemical warfare was viewed as a potentially embarrassing
public relations problem that complicated efforts to provide assistance.
The Iraqi government's repressive internal policies, though well known
to the U.S. government at the time, did not figure at all in the presidential
directives that established U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S.
was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle
East, and to keep the oil flowing.
(Red Herring, Distortion,
Dogmatism)
First, Bush told us that Saddam had “Weapons of Mass destruction.” Then he changed it shortly after the major combat operations ended, referring to them as “weapons programs,” which is different from a weapon. By the January 2004 State of the Union Address, they had become “weapons of mass destruction program-related activities.”
Jim Gilliam "weapons of mass destruction-related
program activities", January 22, 2004 03:56 PM
http://www.jimgilliam.com/2004/01/weapons_of_mass_destructionrelated_program_activities.php
There's a key sequence in Uncovered that shows how the Bush administration changed the language about finding WMD in Iraq from actual weapons to weapons programs. Well, in Tuesday's State of the Union it got even worse -- now it's "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."
Not only did this contradict literally hundreds
of statements by top administration officials who clamed to have clear,
positive proof of actual weapons—Cheney even spoke of “reconstituted nuclear
weapons”—it is also rather difficult to figure out what in blazes it is
supposed to mean. As a reader suggested to me in an e-mail, “If the bill
collector calls, I will inform him that I have a checkbook which is evidence
of ‘possible intent to develop bill-paying programs.’ That should satisfy
him.”
(Loaded Language,
Falsification, Evading the Issue)
[New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour] Hersh quoted an anonymous "former intelligence official" as saying, "One of the reasons I left was my sense that they were using the intelligence from the CIA and other agencies only when it fit their agenda. They didn't like the intelligence they were getting, and so they brought in people to write stuff. They were so crazed and so far out and so difficult to reason with -- to the point of being bizarre. Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God." This source also told Hersh, "If it doesn't fit their theory, they don't want to accept it."
Bush All Too Willing to Use Émigré’s
Lies, Robert Scheer, The Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer2sep02,1,969608.column
Nothing, not a vial of the 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin or the 25,000 liters of anthrax or an ounce of the materials for the 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent claimed by George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech as justification for war. Nor any sign of the advanced nuclear weapons program, a claim based on a now-admitted forgery. Nor has anyone produced any evidence of ties between the deposed Hussein regime and the Al Qaeda terrorists responsible for 9/11.
The entire adventure was an immense fraud.
"We were prisoners of our own beliefs," a
senior U.S. weapons expert who worked with the Iraq Survey Group told The
Times. "We said Saddam Hussein was a master of denial and deception. Then
when we couldn't find anything, we said that proved it, instead of questioning
our own assumptions."
(Falsification,
False Cause, Distortion, Dogmatism, Invincible Ignorance)
In his annual State of the Union address Tuesday, President Bush insisted that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had actively pursued dangerous weapons programs right up to the start of the US attack in March.
"Had we failed to act," Bush said, "the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day."
In a direct challenge to the Bush administration, which says its invasion of Iraq was justified by the presence of illicit arms, Kay said in a telephone interview he had concluded there were no Iraqi stockpiles to be found.
"I don't think they existed," Kay said. "What
everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the
last [1991] Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production
program in the '90s," he said.
(Falsification,
False Cause, Appeal to Force, Distortion, Dogmatism, Invincible Ignorance)
UNSCOM supervised the destruction of more than 40,000 CW munitions, 480,000 liters of CW agents, 1,800,000 liters of chemical precursors, and eight different types of delivery systems including ballistic missile warheads from 1992 to 1998.
The CIA reported in 1997 that a review of 16 locations identified by the U.S. in Gulf War uncovered no evidence of equipment, structures, or unusual security that suggested the presence of chemical weapons.
Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter: by 1996 UNSCOM had enough evidence to verify that Iraq's military had been incapacitated.
Only about 20 Iraq planes have any ability
to confront planes possessed by the United States or Israel.
The main [Office of Special Plans] source of data on Iraqi weapons, and on the manner in which the Iraqi people would greet their 'liberators,' was Ahmad Chalabi. Chalabi was the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group seeking since 1997 the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Chalabi had been hand-picked by Don Rumsfeld to be the leader of Iraq after the removal of Saddam Hussein, despite the fact that he had been convicted in 1992 of 32 counts of bank fraud by a Jordanian court and sentenced in absentia to 22 years in prison. It apparently never occurred to Rumsfeld and the OSP that Chalabi had a lot of reasons to lie. It seems they were too enamored of the data he was providing, because that data fully justified the course of action they had been set upon since September 11, 2001.
Chalabi was the main source behind claims that Iraq had connections to al Qaeda. Chalabi was the main source behind claims that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Chalabi was the main source behind claims that the Iraqi people would rise up and embrace their American invaders. Chalabi's claims on this last matter are the main reason post-war Iraq is in complete chaos, because Rumsfeld assumed the logistics for repairing Iraq would be simple - The joyful Iraqis would do it for him.
The Chalabi scheme was dealt another major blow in February, a month before the war started, when U.S. intelligence agencies monitored him conferring with hard-line Islamic leaders in Tehran, Iran, a State Department official said.
Mr. Chalabi is currently serving on the 25-man
Iraqi Governing Council, where each man takes turns being leader for a
month.
(False Authority,
Slanting)
The propaganda
goes nuclear
Faith-Based Intelligence, Gary Leupp,
Counter Punch, July 26, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp07262003.html
In September National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice told CNN, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," and the next month Bush exploited the same image in Cincinnati.
"Facing clear evidence of peril," he boomed,
"we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in
the form of a mushroom cloud." Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing
before a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Sept.
26, also cited Iraq's attempt to obtain uranium from Niger as evidence
of its persistent nuclear ambitions.
(Scare Tactics,
Slippery Slope)
Bush in October described aluminum tubes Iraq tried to purchase as components of "gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." In his State of the Union address nearly four months later, Bush attributed that evidence to "our intelligence sources."
But some U.S. intelligence agencies were disputing
the president's claim even as he was making it. The State and Energy departments
said the tubes, given their size and specifications, could have been for
Iraq's legal conventional weapons programs and weren't proof of nuclear
ambitions.
(Invincible Ignorance,
Slanting, False Authority)
In January 2001, someone broke into Niger's embassy in Rome, stealing some items of value and ransacking the office. Italian officials speculate that the burglars may have sought letterhead stationary and seals to forge documents. Six months later, the Italian intelligence service SISME obtained a stack of official-looking documents from an African diplomat. These included the Niger uranium letters.
Where Were the Skeptics?, Gilbert Cranberg,
The Star-Telegram, July 6, 2003
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/6239256.htm
[These were used in Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003.] Powell cited almost no verifiable sources. Many of his assertions were unattributed. The speech had more than 40 vague references such as "human sources," "an eyewitness," "detainees," "an al Qaeda source," "a senior defector," "intelligence reports" and the like.
Faith-Based Intelligence, Gary Leupp, Counter
Punch, July 26, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp07262003.html
In March IAEA director general Mohamed El Baradei announced they [the Niger uranium documents presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations] were indeed "not authentic," but rather childish forgeries. "These documents are so bad," a senior IAEA official told the New Yorker, "that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking."
"These were blatant forgeries," said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. A "former high-level intelligence official" interviewed by the New Yorker suggested that it had been an inside job. "Somebody deliberately let something false get in there. It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up."
Powell, on NBC's "Meet the Press," took the news in stride. "It was the information that we had. We provided it. If that information is inaccurate, fine."
Bad Iraq Data From Start to Finish, Robert
Scheer, Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer10jun10,1,8389.column
On Sunday, Condoleezza Rice admitted that President Bush had used a forged document in his State of the Union speech to prove Iraq represented a nuclear threat: "We did not know at the time — maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency — but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course it was information that was mistaken."
United Nations inspectors, belatedly presented
with the same document, realized within hours it was a crude forgery.
(Falsification,
Distortion, Invincible Ignorance, Dogmatism, Slippery Slope, Scare Tactics)
Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity
of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence
to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history,"
as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy,
taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than
200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a
duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.
And now that the C.I.A. has demanded a Justice
Department inquiry, the White House's strategy isn't just to stonewall,
Nixon-style; as one Republican Congressional aide told The New York Times,
it will "slime and defend."
(Character Attack,
Name Calling, Appeal to Force)
This classic pattern applies to the most recent Washington scandal, which revolves around the identification of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative in a July 14, 2003, Robert Novak column.
Washington Editor David Corn noted in an outraged July 16 column that the leakers might have broken the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.
Does a Felon Rove the White House?, Jeremy
Scahill & Amy Goodman, AlterNet, October 1, 2003
http://alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16867
But it's not just intimidation, it's a felony;
until now, a crime the Bush family has taken very seriously. The penalty:
fines of up to $50,000 and imprisonment of up to 10 years.
(Character Attack,
Illegal)
Dick Cheney made the following statements:
1. "We now know that Saddam has resumed his
efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."
2. "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein
now has weapons of mass destruction."
3. "We know he's reconstituted these programs
since the Gulf War."
4. "We know that he has a long-standing relationship
with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization."
5. "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted
nuclear weapons."
The string of claims has finally reached the point where the media are challenging [the Vice President]. On Sunday's "Meet the Press," NBC's Tim Russert replayed the quote about Saddam currently having reconstituted nuclear weapons. Russert said to Cheney, "You misspoke."
Cheney responded, "Yeah, I did misspeak. I
said repeatedly during the show `weapons capability.' We never had any
evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon."
(Falsification,
Distortion, False Cause)
American pilots dropped the controversial incendiary agent napalm on Iraqi troops during the advance on Baghdad. The attacks caused massive fireballs that obliterated several Iraqi positions. The Pentagon denied using napalm at the time, but Marine pilots and their commanders have confirmed that they used an upgraded version of the weapon against dug-in positions. They said napalm, which has a distinctive smell, was used because of its psychological effect on an enemy.
A 1980 UN convention banned the use against civilian targets of napalm, a terrifying mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene that sticks to skin as it burns. The US, which did not sign the treaty, is one of the few countries that makes use of the weapon. It was employed notoriously against both civilian and military targets in the Vietnam war.
At the time, the Pentagon insisted the report was untrue. "We completed destruction of our last batch of napalm on 4 April, 2001," it said.
The revelation that napalm was used in the
war against Iraq, while the Pentagon denied it, has outraged opponents
of the war.
DU is depleted uranium, the dense metal used by U.S. tanks, fighting vehicles and aircraft to pierce and destroy armor. U.S. forces used 320 tons of DU munitions in the Gulf War and more in the spring invasion. But DU is radioactive, and Iraqis blame it for their mysteriously soaring rates of cancer and birth defects.
"Low radiation is more dangerous than an atom bomb," Ali said. "This will kill us for thousands of years."
Birth defects have risen from 11 per 100,000 births in 1989 to 116 per 100,000 births in 2002.
In addition to the 320 tons of DU rounds fired in the '91 war, the Pentagon also has acknowledged using DU in the attacks in March and April of this year. But no official assessment of the amount has been released. Independent analysts say anywhere between 200 and 2,000 tons could have been used this time.
The Shameful Legacy of Radioactive Weaponry,
Heather Wokusch, Heatherwokusch.com, June 13, 2003
http://smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=11814
As might be expected, the US Department of Defense has shown little interest in pinpointing the medical effects of radioactive weaponry. In the 1991 Gulf War, an estimated 320 tons of DU ammunition was dumped on Iraq, and the Pentagon later acknowledged over 900 American soldiers had sustained "moderate to heavy" DU exposure. Few epidemiological studies have been conducted to assess the damage though, and even worse, US government officials have lied to cover up bad results.
Scientific studies in the UK have shown Gulf veterans can have up to 14 times the normal level of genetic chromosome abnormalities, which means their children are also at increased risk for deformities and genetic diseases. It's also been proven that DU-exposed vets have a greater likelihood of contracting lymphatic or bone marrow cancer.
The ultimate irony, of course, is that America may have used radioactive weaponry to justify invading other countries to search for radioactive weaponry. Bitter irony too that our service members were put at increased risk because of the weapons our government gave them.
Now We Are the Iraq Extremists, John Pilger,
The Mirror, August 22, 2003
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid%3D13320863_method%3Dfull_siteid%3D50143_headline%3D-NOW-WE-ARE-THE-IRAQ-EXTREMISTS-name_page.html
Using weapons designed to cause the maximum human suffering - cluster bombs, uranium-tipped shells and firebombs (napalm) - these extremists from outside caused the deaths of at least 8,000 civilians and as many as 30,000 troops, most conscripted teenagers. Consider the waves of grief in any society from that carnage.
Who’s Counting the Dead in Iraq?, Helen
Thomas, The Miami Herald, September 5, 2003
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6695128.htm
I asked Pentagon officials: ''How many Iraqis
have been killed in this war?''
The reply was: “We don't track the Iraqi
dead.''
(Appeal to Force,
Dogmatism, Hypocrisy)
When asked of his opinion of nation building,
Bush said that he was against it, yet the war regime change campaign that
Bush is waging in Iraq will require a long-term commitment of U.S. military
forces for at least 2-5 years, and perhaps as long as 20. Many critics
of this war have labeled such actions as “imperialism,” “occupation,” and
“invasion.”
(Falsification,
Hypocrisy)
According to [new Palestinian leader Ahmed]
Abbas, Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them,
and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am
determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will
act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."
(False Authority,
Shifting the Burden of Proof, Loaded Language, Slanting)
But take comfort that the President clears
all of this up for us by saying repeatedly: “It’s the right thing to do.”
(Simple Speech,
Overgeneralization, Distortion)
In the months before the Iraq war the Pentagon ignored repeated warnings that it would need a substantial military police force ready to deploy after the invasion to provide law and order in the postwar chaos, US government advisers and analysts said yesterday.
Iraqi government services have been crippled by a wave of looting and arson. The anarchy and crime in the Iraqi streets was predicted by several panels of former ambassadors, soldiers and peacekeeping experts, who advised the Pentagon and the White House while the invasion was being planned.
The Pentagon had made a "colossal miscalculation over what they thought the Iraqis would do". "They thought the Iraqis would just get over the trauma of the war and go back to work on the first day," he said.
The Crime and the Cover Up, William Rivers
Pitt, Truthout.org, July 21, 2003
http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=12319&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
"Remember," said Evans, "that the first thing America did was to fire 80,000 police officers. These guys weren't associated with the Hussein regime. The cops knew who the criminals were, and 80,000 cops are gone. So now there are these little mafias that run neighborhoods. With no other work and no way to survive, people are going to become criminals. The borders are wide open - we didn't even get stopped when we came in — so everything is just flowing into Iraq."
Lack of Planning Contributed to Chaos in
Iraq, JONATHAN S. LANDAY and WARREN P. STROBEL, Miami Herald, July 12,
2003
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6285256.htm
Archaeological experts who were worried about protecting Iraq's immense cultural treasures were rebuffed in their requests for meetings before the war. After it, Iraq's museum treasures were looted.
America’s Rebuilding of Iraq in Chaos,
Say British, Peter Foster, Daily Telegraph, June 17, 2003
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F06%2F17%2Fwirq17.xml&sSheet=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F06%2F17%2Fixnewstop.html
The American-led reconstruction effort in Iraq is "in chaos" and suffering from "a complete absence of strategic direction", a very senior British official in Baghdad has told The Telegraph.
"This is the single most chaotic organisation I have ever worked for," the official said yesterday.
The source revealed that Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, had "fewer than 600" staff under his control to run a country the size of France in which the civil infrastructure was on the point of collapse.
"The operation is chronically under-resourced
and suffers from an almost complete absence of strategic direction," he
added.
60% of the country is Shi’ite Muslim, and
they would likely win any democratic election, and their desire is to create
a theocracy, which would work against the interests of the United States.
100,000 Muslims protested against the planned (and since canceled) caucuses,
which would have prevented millions of Iraqis from directly participating
in the elections. Yet, Bush tells us over and over that we are bringing
democracy to Iraq
(Slanting, Distortion,
Falsification)
The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment by a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry.
The task force, which was based at the Pentagon, produced a book-length report that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent, panel members have said.
Still, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress during the war, "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
Similarly, Bush administration officials announced
earlier this year that Iraq's oil revenues would amount to $20 billion
to $30 billion a year. Bremer now estimates that for the next two years,
whatever revenue is reaped from oil production will not exceed the cost
of Iraq's day-to-day operating expenses. In 2005, he said, there might
be a surplus of only $4 million to $5 million.
(Falsification,
Distortion, Slanting)
The United States would spend $20.3 billion to rebuild Iraq under the latest spending proposal from President Bush. According to The Washington Post, some of the projects include:
1. Four-week business course for 2,000 Iraqis,
$20 million ($10,000 per pupil)
2. Forty new garbage trucks, $2 million ($50,000
per truck).
3. Imported petroleum, including kerosene
and diesel, $900 million.
4. Funding to bring in 100 prison-building
experts for six months, $10 million ($100,000 per expert).
6. Witness protection program for 100 families
averaging five persons per family, $100 million ($200,000 per person).
13. Computer study of the Iraqi postal service,
$54 million.
Democrats note that the Bush administration rejected, as too costly, a $200 million Democratic proposal to increase support for US first responders, even as it proposed $290 million for the Iraqi police force. Similarly, a request for $125 million to hire 1,300 more customs inspectors on US borders was turned down, yet $150 million is proposed by the White House for 5,350 border inspectors in Iraq.
Bush’s Big Swindle of Americans, Iraqis
to Pay off American Corporations, L.E. Miller, Al-Jazeerah, September 30,
2003
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2003%20Opinion%20Editorials/September/29
%20o/Bush's%20big%20swindle%20of%20Americans%20and%20Iraqis%20to%20pay%20off%20corporations%20L.%20E.%20Miller.htm
"We're not talking sanity here," Dyer said.
"The world's second-largest oil country is importing oil, and a country
full of concrete is importing concrete."
Brown and Root, a Haillburton subsidiary was awarded nearly $500 million dollars in contracts without competitive bidding. The contracts were awarded in December 2001. In other words, this war was planned at least within three short months of 9/11. Yet, no evidence has surfaced that Iraq was involved in any way with 9/11 or the al-Qaida. Cheney has coveted the Iraqi oil fields for over a decade, the federal mandated release of his energy task force papers make clear that the plans had moved to the war planning stage by March 2001---six months before 9/11--- as contracts were under review for Iraq oil fields not yet in US possession.
It is also a fact that during the first Gulf War the oil fields were not set ablaze by Iraqi forces but by a secret team of US Special Forces. Of course, it was Brown and Root that was granted the contract to put out those fires.
Bush’s Unwelcome Facts, Skot Pierson, Juneau
Empire, September 10, 2003
http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/091003/opi_myturn.shtml
Fully one-third of the $3.9 billion per month
cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going directly to Halliburton. $1
billion has been paid Halliburton through mid-August alone, plus ...
An eye-popping $7 billion to put out non-existent
fires at Iraqi oil wells.
The White House has argued against the allegation
that this war against Iraq is about oil.
(That now must be deemed to be a Falsification)
The vice president told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14 he had no influence on Halliburton's current contracts in Iraq, never lobbied the defense department on behalf of the company and has no financial interest in the company.
The vice president's aides say Cheney received
$147,579 in deferred compensation in 2001 and $162,392 in 2002 under a
binding arrangement he made with Halliburton in 1998. The annual payments
will continue through 2005. Cheney also holds 433,333 Halliburton
stock options.
(Falsification,
Distortion)
A February 1997 study by the GAO found that [Halliburton] overcharged the government $462.5 million for an operation it said would cost $191.6 million when presented to Congress in 1996.
In February 2002, KBR paid $2 million to settle a lawsuit with the Justice Department which alleged that the company had defrauded the government during its work in the closure of Fort Ord in Monterey, Calif.
Dammen Gant Campbell, a former contracts manager
for KBR, turned whistle-blower and revealed "that between 1994 and 1998
the company had fraudulently inflated project costs by misrepresenting
the quantities, quality and types of materials required for 224 projects,"
CorpWatch reported.
(Appeal to Force)
[The US] authorities promptly shut down the
[Iraqi phone] services. Cell service, they said, could be offered only
by the winners in a bidding process — one whose rules, revealed on July
31, seemed carefully designed to shut out any non-American companies.
Meanwhile, only Paul Bremer and his people have cellphones — and, thanks
to the baffling decision to give that contract to MCI, even those phones
don't work very well. (Aside from the fact that its management perpetrated
history's biggest accounting fraud, MCI has no experience in building cell
networks.)
(Appeal to Force)
Letters published in Stars and Stripes and
e-mail published on the Web site of Col. David Hackworth (a decorated veteran
and Pentagon critic) describe shortages of water. One writer reported that
in his unit, "each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day,"
and that inadequate water rations were leading to "heat casualties." An
American soldier died of heat stroke on Saturday; are poor supply and living
conditions one reason why U.S. troops in Iraq are suffering such a high
rate of noncombat deaths?
"There are some who feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there," Bush told reporters at the White House. "My answer is, `Bring 'em on.'
"I am shaking my head in disbelief," Sen.
Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said. "When I served in the Army in Europe during
World War II, I never heard any military commander--let alone the commander
in chief--invite enemies to attack U.S. troops."
(Appeal to Force,
Loaded Language)
Two top U.S. defense officials signaled Congress
on Wednesday that U.S. forces might remain in Iraq for as long as a decade
and that permanent facilities need to be built to house them there.
The uniformed Americans in Iraq and the 9,000 in Afghanistan will lose a pay increase approved last April of $75 a month in "imminent danger pay" and $150 a month in "family separation allowances."
The Defense Department supports the cuts, saying its budget can't sustain the higher payments amid a host of other priorities.
Bush’s “Bring ‘Em On” Speech Rings Hollow
as He Cuts Benefits for Soldiers, Veterans, Gary Chapman, Austin American-Statesman,
July 10, 2003
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/auto/epaper/editions/thursday/editorial_f3d0f034d318e02f00a4.html;COXnetJSessionID=190eZRxr22HBfsS1cPe7VbmYskR6RbAXNIUbzLpbmcWZhLIRuq1D!2123086895?urac=n&urvf=10652191661630.45916971653466676
The White House also cut budgets for upgrading military housing, and it proposed caps in pay rates for the lowest ranks of enlisted personnel. It also whacked veterans' benefits, cutting $14.6 billion over 10 years.
Bush is waging war on the working families of soldiers, too, by changing the rules on who is eligible for overtime pay, attacking trade unions, cutting social service benefits, and rewarding his wealthy friends with tax cuts.
Bush Trims Federal Workers’ Wages, Cites
“National Emergency”, Leigh Strope, Boston Globe, August 28, 2003
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/08/28/bush_trims_federal_workers_raises_cites_national_emergency/
Citing a national emergency that has existed since the 2001 terrorist attacks, President Bush said yesterday he will cut the pay raises that most civilian federal employees were to receive in January. In a letter to congressional leaders, Bush said he was using his authority to change the pay structure in times of "national emergency or serious economic conditions" to limit raises to 2 percent.
Bush said granting those full raises would
cost about $11 billion more than he had proposed in his budget. "Such
cost increases would threaten our efforts against terrorism or force deep
cuts in discretionary spending or federal employment to stay within budget,"
Bush wrote.
Normally Republican, many retired veterans are mad that Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress are blocking remedies to two problems with health and pension benefits. They say they feel particularly betrayed by Bush, who appealed to them in his 2000 campaign, and who vowed on the eve of his inauguration that "promises made to our veterans will be promises kept."
"He pats us on the back with his speeches and stabs us in the back with his actions," said Charles A. Carter of Shawnee, Okla., a retired Navy senior chief petty officer. "I will vote non-Republican in a heart beat if it continues as is."
"I feel betrayed," said Raymond C. Oden Jr., a retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant now living in Abilene, Texas.
"I voted for the president because of the
promises," said Floyd Sears, a retired Air Force master sergeant in Biloxi,
Miss. "But as far as I can tell, he has done nothing. In fact, his actions
have been detrimental to the veterans and retired veterans."
"My concern is that it could set precedents resulting in a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without credible justification," Mr Annan told the assembly to sustained applause. He did not mention the United States by name.
Eight Reasons Why WMD Matters, Steve Gilliard,
Daily Kos, June 21, 2003
http://www.dailykos.com/archives/003124.html#003124
As long as US forces are in Iraq, the North Koreans have a free hand. If they were to plunge across the Han River tomorrow, we have ONE heavy division able to deploy to Korea. Half of the US combat power is now stuck playing policeman in Iraq and will be for months, their equipment breaking down daily, men being killed by enemy action.
The United States currently has one half of
its servicepeople and the majority of our munitions committed to the Persian
Gulf region, which may render the United States unable to effectively fight
an attack by North Korea. Before Bush assumed office, a U.S. Admiral
in the South Pacific bemoaned that fact that the United States military
was too stretched out due to hundreds of world-wide operations conducted
by Clinton between 1992 and 2000. He argued that he questioned the
ability and effectiveness of the U.S. military if it has to fight against
more than one front simultaneously. This war against Iraq is the
second major U.S. front stared by Bush (Afghanistan is the other).
Concurrently, the U.S. is engaged actively in countries such as Bosnia,
Pakistan, South Korea, Georgia (the Russian republic), Venezuela, Columbia,
and Haiti.
(Counterproductive,
hypocritical)
10% of America’s policemen and women are
currently deployed in Iraq, serving their commitment to the Reserves.
This decreases America’s ability to react to a future act of terrorism,
thus making us less safe.
(Counterproductive,
hypocritical)
Around 81% of Pakistanis expressed aversion to US foreign policy. In Argentina loathing of America reaches 73% and just 6% of the Egyptian public has a favourable view of the United States.
Is the spread of American ideas good or bad? Britain, 50% say bad, 67% in Germany, 68% in Russia, 71% in France, Turkey at 78%, Pakistan at 81% and Egypt at 84%.
World Press Unconvinced by Bush Visit,
BBC, Saturday, 22 November, 2003, 14:23 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/3228980.stm
Mr Bush has certainly been offended because
he himself, who was supposed to fight against terrorism, has been labelled
as the number one terrorist by Europeans.
— Malaysia's Berita Harian
Regrettably, Bush and his colleague Blair
turned deaf ears to the chanting slogans of thousands of people and determined
to tread the way of barbarism.
— Pakistan-based Afghan newspaper Shahadat
We are going to ignore the United Nations
in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot
be ignored? No, it must be
(Invincible Ignorance,
Appeal to Force, Double Standard)
We’re going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war? No, it must be (Appeal to Reward, Appeal to Force)
The paramount principle is that the UN's word
must be taken seriously, but we have to subvert its word to guarantee that
it is? No, it must be
(Invincible Ignorance,
Appeal to Force, Double Standard)
We intend to bring democracy to Iraq by violating
the democracy of the U.N. Security Council? No, it must be
(Invincible Ignorance,
Appeal to Force, Dogmatism, Double Standard)
In dealing with a man who demands no dissension
at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak
with one voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices
to be heard.
(Bandwagon Appeal,
Appeal to Reward, Appeal to Force, Dogmatism)
We are sending our gathered might to the Persian
Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein
seems to think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition
until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition.
(Invincible Ignorance,
Appeal to Force, Dogmatism, Double Standard)
We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores
his own people, yet our President says that he is “undeterred” by war protestors,
calling their voice “insignificant.”
(Invincible Ignorance,
Appeal to Force, Dogmatism, Double Standard)
Bush wants to impose democracy in Iraq by
gunpoint. He calls this “war for peace,” which is an oxymoron.
(Appeal to Force,
Equivocation, Simple Speech, Either/Or, Double Standard)
Bush refers to nations that violate international
law “rogue nations,” defined as a country that enters into wars without
being threatened, yet America is doing just that by waging war.
(Name Calling, Stereotype,
Simple Speech, Overgeneralization, Appeal to Force, hypocrisy)
Pakistan has sold nuclear technology to North
Korea and Iran, and harbored terrorists such as Bin Laden, yet they are
our allies?
(Double Standard,
Hypocrisy, Evading the Issue)
US spied on UN representatives, and the UK
spied on Kofi Annan.
(Illegal, Immoral)
White House supported a gambling bill that
would allow people to bet on the assassinations of world leaders.
Gee, who would be the insiders in this stock market?
(Immoral)
Bush called himself a “uniter, not a divider,”
but he has created division amongst the international community as well
as within his own country.
(Simple Speech,
Falsification)
Bush continually tells us that we will “defeat
terror.” But how do you defeat a concept or an emotion?
(Simple Speech,
Invincible Ignorance, Dogmatism, Appeal to Force, Loaded Language, Moral
Equivalence)
“It’s the right thing to do.”
(Simple Speech,
Overgeneralization)
The whole war in Iraq is a red herring!
Saddam became a Straw Man
for the War on Terror, since we couldn’t get Bin Laden or wage a successful
war against Pakistan or North Korea.