It's Official

[madyaks]

Originally posted by Damtoft@Feb 20 2004, 02:48 PM
Seems to me David Kay was referencing Clinton's bombing of Baghdad and other Iraqi sites just the other day.

Must have been my imagination.

When did Clinton INVADE, and when did he say it would be a good idea to do so.

It's so funny to see all of the NEW reasons we went to war, when Bush only outlined ONE.
(I guess the one he outlined was fake, so his supporters need a new one)

[FAR52]

Originally posted by Moe_Szyslak@Feb 20 2004, 02:37 PM
Don't recall the Clinton invasion of Iraq, but I may have been traveling...

BTW, which time was the administration telling the truth? Before or after 9/11?

Excerpt from press conference on 24 February 2001 during Powell's visit to Cairo, Egypt. Answering a question about the US-led sanctions against Iraq, the Secretary of State said:

We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq...

Oh good lord -- we aren't going to go down this path again are we? Well if so, here is how I responded in the David Kay thread:

I'm pretty sure the Powell statements have been taken out of context. And as the following article suggests, so does Secretary Powell:


Powell says 2001 comments on Iraqi sanctions consistent with WMD claims
Thursday, 25-Sep-2003 9:27PM PDT Story from AFP / Matthew Lee
Copyright 2003 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)

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

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 25 (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday that comments he made in early 2001 about the success of UN sanctions in preventing then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from obtaining illegal weapons were consistent with the US rationale for going to war two years later.

Powell, speaking to reporters here after a luncheon meeting of foreign ministers from the five permanent UN Security Council members, said his 2001 remarks were being taken out of context and that he had not changed his view of Saddam's weapons programs.

"I didn't change my assessment," he said when asked about the Februry 2001 comments in which he appeared to suggest the UN sanctions had succeeding in keeping Saddam from developing weapons of mass destruction and threatening its neighbors.

Powell noted that the comments dated from the very early days of US President George W. Bush's administration which was then trying to prevent the Iraq sanctions from being lifted.

"At that time, three weeks into the administration when I was trying to get sanctions retained -- and we did succeed in getting sanctions retained -- I made that observation," Powell said.

"But you will note that I did not say he didn't have weapons of mass destruction. I also went on to say that it was important for us to keep the pressure on and for inspectors to be able to get back in and for sanctions to be kept in place.

"He (Saddam) was a threat then. The extent of his holdings were yet to be determined. It was early in the administration, and fact of the matter, it was long before" the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

"So a lot changed between February 2001, but I don't find anything inconsistent between what I said then and what I've said all along," Powell said.

Powell made the original remarks on February 24, 2001, during his first trip to the Middle East at a news conference in Cairo with former Egyptian foreign minster Amr Moussa.

At that time, Powell was on a diplomatic drive to alter the sanctions on Iraq in a bid to stem growing international calls for them to be dropped.

"Frankly" they have worked," he said at the Cairo news conference, referring to the sanctions. "He (Saddam) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.

"He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors," Powell said. "So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place.

The comments have been seized on by some in the anti-war camp as evidence that the United States and Britain exaggerated the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in order to sell the war to their publics.

No such weapons have yet been found in Iraq.

Of course then Kah popped in with a "he is obviously just trying to cover up his lie" comment. I responded this way:

Kah:

maybe you didn't read the article or perhaps don't recall the time in which he spoke those words. The administration was one month old and was desparately trying to keep the Iraq sanctions in place. In fact, he spoke those words while in Egypt (I believe) trying to maintain international support for the sanctions.

You can be partisan on this, or could try to look at the statement objectively.

Did he say that Iraq did not have WMD in the statement?

Thanks

Finally, I located this Powell testimony which reinforces his current explanation of the comments he made in Egypt:

Moe:

here are more Powell thoughts on Iraq WMD. Apparently, this is from testimony he gave just a few months later on May 15, 2001, before the Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. I found this on the internet -- but there was no link to the original, so I cannot account for its authenticity. I've highlighted relevant sections:



Secretary Powell: The sanctions, as they are called, have succeeded over the last 10 years, not in deterring him from moving in that direction, but from actually being able to move in that direction. The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn't have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been contained. And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological and nuclear -- I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful. There's no question that they have some stockpiles of some of these sorts of weapons still under their control, but they have not been able to break out, they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago.

So containment, using this arms control sanctions regime, I think has been reasonably successful. We have not been able to get the inspectors back in, though, to verify that, and we have not been able to get the inspectors in to pull up anything that might be left there. So we have to continue to view this regime with the greatest suspicion, attribute to them the most negative motives, which is quite well-deserved with this particular regime, and roll the sanctions over, and roll them over in a way where the arms control sanctions really go after their intended targets -- weapons of mass destruction -- and not go after civilian goods or civilian commodities that we really shouldn't be going after, just let that go to the Iraqi people. That wasn't the purpose of the oil-for-food program. And by reconfiguring them in that way, I think we can gain support for this regime once again.

When we came into office on the 20th of January, the whole sanctions regime was collapsing in front of our eyes. Nations were bailing out on it. We lost the consensus for this kind of regime because the Iraqi regime had successfully painted us as the ones causing the suffering of the Iraqi people, when it was the regime that was causing the suffering. They had more than enough money; they just weren't spending it in the proper way. And we were getting the blame for it. So reconfiguring the sanctions, I think, helps us and continues to contain the Iraqi regime.


A couple of thoughts here. First, the last section really places Powell's earlier Feb. comments in context -- at least in my opinion -- and supports his current day explanation of the Feb. comments.

Second, there is no doubt that at this point, Powell believed that Iraq had as much WMD as he did at the beginning of Gulf War I. Powell believed, however, that Saddam had not been successful in developing or acquiring technologies that would allow him to, in effect, launch the WMD against his neighboring countries.

Thanks

[lazydaze]

Originally posted by madyaks+Feb 20 2004, 03:14 PM-->

QUOTE(madyaks @ Feb 20 2004, 03:14 PM)

[hkyfan]

Originally posted by Damtoft@Feb 20 2004, 02:15 PM
>>You're still living under the illusion that voting takes place by an "informed electorate".<<

hcky finally coming clean.

He believes people aren't capable of self-government.

Benevolent Dictator form of government rocks.

[nick2]

He believes people aren't capable of self-government.

I think he believes people like you aren't capable of self-government!

[Damtoft]

Hey Fuckface,

Are people killed by cruise missiles any less dead than those killed directly by the bullets of soldiers?

[Trigfunctions]

Originally posted by Damtoft@Feb 20 2004, 06:08 PM
Hey Fuckface,

Another example of the Christian Church's contribution to Western Civilization.

[Damtoft]

Another thread about me.

[Trigfunctions]

Originally posted by Damtoft@Feb 20 2004, 06:15 PM
Another thread about me.

No - like I said earlier, you asked me what contributions the Christian Church has made to Western Civilization, and that was a continuation of my answer, although I have to be honest - I'm not 100% certain of the Church's position on the use of the word "fuckface."