Kay: No WMD's

[gldstwmn]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/24/po...24WEAP.html?th

Iraq Illicit Arms Gone Before War, Departing Inspector States
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: January 24, 2004


WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 — David Kay, who led the American effort to find banned weapons in Iraq, said Friday after stepping down from his post that he has concluded that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons at the start of the war last year.

In an interview with Reuters, Dr. Kay said he now thought that Iraq had illicit weapons at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but that the subsequent combination of United Nations inspections and Iraq's own decisions "got rid of them."


Asked directly if he was saying that Iraq did not have any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the country, Dr. Kay replied, according to a transcript of the taped interview made public by Reuters, "That is correct."

Click the link for the full article.

[strandinthewind]

I agree. But, how does the lack of finding WMD obviate SH unwillingness to cooperate with the UN for 11 years in demonstrating he had no WMD. So, I always conclude that while the timing of the regime change in Iraq can and should be questioned, SH remains the sole cause for it.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
I agree. But, how does the lack of finding WMD obviate SH unwillingness to cooperate with the UN for 11 years in demonstrating he had no WMD. So, I always conclude that while the timing of the regime change in Iraq can and should be questioned, SH remains the sole cause for it.

My point was, they lied.

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
My point was, they lied.

I agree W lied about the nuclear stuff and should be impeached for it . But I do not think he, Clinton, or any other world leader for the last ten years lied about thinking SH had WMD programs. I mean all of the intelligence pointed to that being the case. So, I think they were just wrong on that point.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
I agree W lied about the nuclear stuff and should be impeached for it . But I do not think he, Clinton, or any other world leader for the last ten years lied about thinking SH had WMD programs. I mean all of the intelligence pointed to that being the case. So, I think they were just wrong on that point.

Yup. The differnce is Clinton didn't invade a country over it. Next stop on the Rummy Express: Syria.

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
Yup. The differnce is Clinton didn't invade a country over it. Next stop on the Rummy Express: Syria.

Touche - but Clinton did not have the post-9/11 world to contend with. I know SH had no connections to AQ or what happened here on 9/11. I just think that after 9/11 it was too dangerous to put up with SH's BS anymore. But - you and I will argue that one until the end of time

I know - I read that Rummy wants to invade Syria over the Israel/Hezbollaf (sp.?) thing. While I am no fan of Syria, this is just another reason why W needs to go.

[estranged4life]

Carmen San Diego or Waldo®; "Where are the WMD's?" the board game, And coming soon the novel (ala Harry Potter) & Video game...

Brian j.

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by estranged4life
Carmen San Diego or Waldo®; "Where are the WMD's?" the board game, And coming soon the novel (ala Harry Potter) & Video game...

Brian j.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
Touche - but Clinton did not have the post-9/11 world to contend with. I know SH had no connections to AQ or what happened here on 9/11. I just think that after 9/11 it was too dangerous to put up with SH's BS anymore. But - you and I will argue that one until the end of time

Could 9/11 have been prevented?

[estranged4life]

or does the whole "Find the WMD's" scenario seem like it has turned into an episode of ?

Brian j.

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
Could 9/11 have been prevented?

By Bush I or by Clinton? Perhaps. But that would have involved pissing off the Saudis, which no one to this day is willing to do.

Did the current administration know enough to prevent 9/11 (the exact events) - who knows? The information certainly was there.

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by estranged4life
or does the whole "Find the WMD's" scenario seem like it has turned into an episode of ?

Brian j.

Once again

Yes, esp. now that none have been found and the current administration is spinning it faster than the Curly Shuffle

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
By Bush I or by Clinton? Perhaps. But that would have involved pissing off the Saudis, which no one to this day is willing to do.

Did the current administration know enough to prevent 9/11 (the exact events) - who knows? The information certainly was there.

I think your first sentence should read Bush or Gore. No matter.

http://johnbuchanan.org/news/newsite...1154&showcat=4

SPEECH TO MANCHESTER SUPPORT GROUP 1/7/04

Good afternoon and thank you for welcoming me so warmly.


I stand before you today less as a candidate and more as a messenger and the message I bear is simple and stark. We have all been lied to about 9/11, the country is in mortal danger and only you can make it right.


If you need a label, I stand here as a 9/11 Truth Candidate and some may thus dismiss me as a single-issue candidate and in a narrow sense that is true. But if you consider that 9/11 has led us into fiscal ruin, endless war and constitutional twilight, my issue is the mother issue of our age.


That said let me return to the 9/11 message the first line of which is this:


They wanted it to happen.


They being the neocon members and associates of PNAC, the Project for a New American Century, an ultra-rightwing think tank and mouthpiece for Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and most Bush handlers these days. Cheney, Wolfowitz and their PNAC fellows had been campaigning publicly for Mideast oil wars since 2000, but also said publicly that the American people were not likely to buy these plans without a quote "catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor” unquote.


They wanted it to happen.


And despite over 23 warnings from 11 foreign governments in the months preceding the attacks they did NOTHING to protect or warn the country.


They did less than nothing. They quashed 5 different investigations into Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda by FBI teams, and then promoted the FBI official who did most of that quashing right after 9/11.


They wanted it to happen.


And the day it finally did they let it run its course. There was a mysterious total collapse of all our air defenses. Even though planes had been routinely scrambled 67 times for far lesser threats in the preceding year, on 9/11 all standard operating procedures inexplicably broke down. With 4 hijacked planes in the air and Flight 77 taking more than an hour to reach the Pentagon, not a single plane was there to intercept its deadly course.


Think about that for a long moment. A trillion dollar defense establishment, over three months of top level warnings, an hour’s lead time, fighters based ten minutes away, and they could not even protect their own goddamn headquarters.


So 9/11 happened.

3000 people were instantly killed. The economy was desperately wounded, the country paralyzed with fear.


Madness, you say. Who could possibly benefit from such a tragedy?


Well, let’s just recite some facts.

The president’s poll numbers nearly doubled overnight.
Our intelligence and defense services, who neither informed or defended us, got a huge new budget bounce.
The FBI got a big cash bonus too plus a secret police wet dream in the form of the Patriot Act.

(And when a couple senators -- Daschle and Leahy say, “Slow down, this Act’s not exactly patriotic or even constitutional” – guess who gets anthrax in the mail?)


Arms merchants like Daddy Bush’s Carlyle Group reaped billions, no, tens of billions, from new “War on Terrorism” orders.
Washington insider firms like Cheney’s Halliburton, and GOP cash cow Bechtel harvested hundreds of billions in no-bid contracts as we methodically blow up and renovate both Afghanistan and Iraq.

So 9/11 happened and the administration ordered, “thou shalt not investigate! It will distract us from the fight against terror and all the war we have to make.”

White House refusal may seem natural, but where was our crusading press. It is another simple sad fact that the journalists who should have been investigating this whole peculiar business were now owned and operated by big media corporations who were making so damn much selling these wars that they held their peace instead. They not only did not question the scores of 9/11 lies and contradictions, they never even told the public there were still unanswered questions there at all.


So 9/11 happened, flags were waved, money flowed and the press shut up.


And there it all would have ended – PNAC with its oil wars, Bush with new poll Viagra, the FBI free from the Bill of Rights, the merchants of war rolling in blank checks and the media fat with cash. A happing ending, no?


Not for the victim families, and if it weren’t for a few hundred courageous ones I wouldn’t be standing in front of you today.


The government tried to buy their silence too, and offered all 3,000 families fat payments from a Victims Compensation Fund. Each would get about a million bucks if they just promised to shut, stop asking the logical questions and simply go away.


Most did, it is true. But some who were paying attention fought back and demanded a real investigation. They got the National 9/11 Commission instead.


Can you imagine a 9/11 investigative commission where most of the commissioners have ties to the oil, airline and arms industries if not to the White House itself?


Where the witnesses are not even asked to testify under oath?


Where interrogations of FBI, FAA and NORAD insiders are all supervised by White House chaperones called “minders” ?


Where the executive director worked for years with Condi Rice, head of the National Security Council who herself refuses to testify under oath?


Where the latest appointed commissioner is an Iraq war hawk who publicly said he thought the most important role of the commission was quote "not to embarrass the president" unquote?


Could you believe in an investigation like that? Can you believe the **** that is going down?


Well, neither can I and that is why I am here today to ask you to join with the desperate victim families and demand belated truth.


The country has been swindled into endless war, repression and financial collapse. Thousands of people have been murdered and we still don’t know the facts.


I am just one voice saying these things up here in New Hampshire today, but if you would just do some homework you would see there are thousands like me working in shadow on the internet trying get out what the victim families want to say.


One great crusader in this struggle is your own Ellen Mariani, a Derry 9/11 widow who is suing Bush, Cheney and their neocon kin for knowingly letting her husband die for personal and political gain.


I beg you to rally around her as one of the heroes of this cause, I also beg you to read some vital texts like Nafeez Ahmed’s “The War on Freedom” or the 9/11 timeline at cooperativeresearch.org And finally I ask you to vote for me to send a message of your own -- that this land is our land and it’s time for gestapo-minded war profiteers to get hell out.


I thank you for sitting here and pray you will now begin to move.


Good night and god bless what’s left of our democracy


This is the other Republican that is running for president.

[strandinthewind]

I know this, but I just cannot believe "they" would go so far as that. I mean there are so many other ways to make money off of the govt. But, being a conspiracy theorist as well ( ), I agree this paints an alarming picture.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
I know this, but I just cannot believe "they" would go so far as that. I mean there are so many other ways to make money off of the govt. But, being a conspiracy theorist as well ( ), I agree this paints an alarming picture.

I understand. This is going to be a very hard thing for Americans to swallow. He raises some valid questions though, don't you think?