Is Iraq A Quagmire Yet? - Part 3

[quote=“fred smith”]Nope Spook:

You will have to ask the British govt why they have not backed away from this claim.[/quote]

No evidence to back up your claim, eh? :laughing:

I must say, I’m shocked.

Yeah, I’m familiar with the "But Saddam had the will, the means, every intention to . . . " ‘argument’ for getting your war on.

I myself wasn’t aware that Saddam himself could even fix a toaster – or that so much as a nuclear-powered toaster buried in someone’s backyard was left of his “means” to single-handedly without outside help and in complete secrecy re-constitute a weapons of mass destruction capability – quite a feat for a 67 year old man who probably would have been well into his 70’s before he decided to go nuclear.

You must mean his scientific and technical cadres and not Saddam himself when you talk about having the means to . . . .

Where are they now? Are they all on ice and are you sure? Just keeping Saddam in prison isn’t going to do diddly if all those lower and middle level scientists, engineers and technicians are filtering off this very minute to Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt – North Korea – to find work . . .

Proof of what? The British said they would not give the evidence over to us since it was a third country. The British have NOT backed off the claim. What more do you need evidence of? And incidentally, no Jews were involved in this so don’t worry, Israel had nothing to do with it.

A quote of the British government or MI6 saying it has evidence it won’t hand over to the U.S. and why.

Even better would be a statement by the ISG that it has been told by the British government that credible evidence exists but it can’t be shared and, in general, why.

Or, some credible explanation why British and U.S. intelligence services which share classified information daily on a wide range of subjects won’t share this particular bit of classified information with the condition that only non-classified details be made public.

You mean sorta like this :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

[quote]In that speech, Bush stated: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Since last Monday, the administration has offered changing explanations for that statement. At first, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the statement was simply wrong because it “was based and predicated on the yellowcake from Niger.”

On Friday, Bush and top aides said the CIA approved the inclusion of those words, and CIA Director George J. Tenet took responsibility. Yet Bush aides have argued in recent days that the statement may, in fact, prove to be correct. Officials said Sunday the British had sources other than the forged documents, but they have declined to reveal them. [/quote]

washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dy … Found=true

or you mean this :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

[quote]LONDON, England (CNN) – Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has defended Britain’s decision to include in its first Iraqi dossier claims that Saddam Hussein tried to get uranium from Africa.

Straw Saturday acknowledged that the CIA expressed reservations about the use of the claim in the UK government’s September dossier on Iraqi weapons – but insisted it was based on what British officials regarded as “reliable intelligence” which had not been shared with the United States. [/quote]

Or how about this? :raspberry: :raspberry: :raspberry:

guardian.co.uk/theissues/art … 35,00.html

Need some more? Just be sure and ask…

taipeitimes.com/News/edit/ar … 2003219937

As Fred correctly points out:

"A report in the Financial Times said the newspaper had learnt from two “senior Whitehall sources” that Britain obtained its information on the uranium from two west European countries thought to be France and Italy."

The actual source of the ‘secret evidence’ that Britain is relying on is France. It isn’t British intelligence in any sense. Britain’s official reason why it can’t pass on this ‘evidence’ to the U.S. is, as Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has so succinctly explained:

“It just happens to be one of the rules of liaison with foreign intelligence services that they own the intelligence. The second intelligence service does not and therefore we are not able to pass it on to the third party.”

The ‘second intelligence service’ being Britain’s MI6.

Since everyone knows, of course, who the real source of the secret evidence is because that’s not secret, at least at the official level, U.S. intelligence simply went to France and asked them what they were showing the British that the Brits were honor-bound not to show to the U.S. :astonished:

From a link kindly provided by Comrade Stalin on the subject earlier:

"American intelligence officials were further misled over Saddam’s supposed attempt to buy uranium when France - which effectively controls mining in Niger - told Washington that it had reason to believe that Iraq was trying to do so. “Only later did Paris inform Washington that its belief had been based on the same documents that had tricked the Americans and the British,” an Italian diplomat said.

"This was la grande trappola [the big trap]. The Americans were now convinced by the French that Saddam really was trying to buy uranium. They thought the French must be right, since not even a gram of uranium in Niger could be shifted without their knowledge."

British officials still say that the claim about Iraqi uranium purchases rested on a second source, not just the now-discredited documents. Intelligence officials from some other Western countries now believe, however, that the second source was also France - part of a “sinister trap” for Mr Blair.

French intelligence was asked by The Sunday Telegraph for a public comment on the allegations against it, but has yet to give one."

news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.j … uran05.xml

[color=blue]This is just another example of the echo chamber effect which ‘proved’ before the invasion that Iraq was brimming with weapons of mass destruction and ‘everyone believed it.’ Just saying something and then quoting your own echo makes it true.[/color]

Nope, if you think Saddam had nothing against us and a lack of will or ability to do something then you are seriously confused. 9-11 showed that waiting for things to happen like we did with afghanistan wasn’t the fun and smiles you guys seem to think.

The logical end of course for a world in which mere suspicions are elevated to the status of casus belli is a planet inevitably reduced to smoldering ruins.

May its next inhabitants have the sense to learn from our demise and the kindness to at least erect a small inscription to us:

Here They Lie
But Smoldering Ashes
Their Pinnacle Art
Their Suicidal Clashes

Spook:

Now, I am very confused. Are you now agreeing with me that there was evidence and that the US acted in good faith? Are you then suggesting that the evidence was fake and that the French were deliberately lying to us to get us to invade Iraq even while busy fighting us in the UN to keep us from doing so? I have my issues with the French government but this seems just too farfetched and incredible. Why would the French do something like this?

Did they want us to invade Iraq or not? What do they have to gain from offering trumped off evidence to get us to invade and then fight us in the UN to keep us from doing so?

Sorry, I don’t buy it.