Redstate

Conyers needs to go home.

I find it strange that people who are fairly serious about enabling the completion of the Holocaust are so sensitive about being called anti-Semitic.  

The sight of this headline--DEMOCRATS PLAY HOUSE TO RALLY AGAINST WAR--would send me off to my bedroom, to scream into my pillow in terror and despair.

If DANA MILBANK has taken to mocking the House Democrats--and that's what this is, then my party's House delegation is in big trouble.  You write a headline like this if you smell blood.  If they can't control Conyers and Waters, the House Dems are in trouble.

Milbank might easily have titled the piece "See the House Democratic Fools at play."  The content of the article certainly supported such a headline.

How will the remaining Blue Dog Democrats explain to their constituents that they're still part of this party?

Is vacating the House as fast as he can.

Right into the arms of Dick Durbin and Harry Reid.

I swear that every week that goes by, he more seriously considers running as an independent.

exactly who Richard Dearlove met on his trip to the U.S. immediately preceeding the Downing Street Memo?  As head of Mi6 I'd assume he met with the head of the CIA and possibly the DIA or NSC.  Has there been any indication that he met with anyone, you know, in the administration?  Because if it was strictly a routine intelligence community meeting why exactly should so much faith be put into his opinion of the political sentiment at the time?  Both Mi6 and U.S. intelligence were, looking back, abject failures at the time.  I have almost absolutely no interest in the DSM story but that question hasn't been answered much less asked from what I've seen.  Just curious.

I just wonder what are the odds of a party switch by him. Given his ambition, his uncle and fathers' "situations", and the opportunities available, I gotta believe he'd be a prime recruit.

That said, I'm almost completely ignorant of the chances here, or the firmness of his ties to the Tennessee democratic party.

If they can't control Conyers and Waters, the House Dems are in trouble.

Why control them? When you're a Democrat, you can count on sycophantic press coverage no matter what silly stunt you pull. This article by Milbank must be a major shock. That's certainly not what they got from the rest of the tribe.

The New York Times sent this glowing report around the world.

The San Francisco Comical had their own guy there, and he covered it as a straight story.

In the UK, the leftist Guardian thought this was just great. Knight-Ridder treated it as a serious event, as did the always-reliable Democrat shill Pete Yost of Associated Press.

So don't worry. Even when Conyers is out there being silly and stupid, you can count on the mainstream media to spin it the best way they can for you. Milbank is probably getting his knuckles rapped right now for not being a team player.

to see WaPo run a story like this.  Usually you might expect to see that newspaper cater to the Democrats' strangest fantasies.

It's also interesting to see how much hay is being made out of a memo that conveys a British staffers' second-hand account of second-hand rumors exchanged at a meeting neither President Bush nor Tony Blair attended.

this wasn't simply "a British staffers' second-hand account of second-hand rumors".  This is a memo by the head of MI6 (Britain's equivalent of the CIA) recording his impressions of a meeting he had in Washington with his counterparts in the CIA (presumeably including George Tenet).

It rather dispels the myth about a liberal bias in the media doesn't it?

Dana is a hack.  This is the kind of drivel he writes in general, although he comes down as ridiculous on both sides of the aisle depending on which day he's writing.

When I read the article I was like, "huh?" and I researched the guy a bit.  He's a goof, writing in the kind of style that Ann Coulter would write, except he biases it from the right on Tuesdays Wednesdays and Fridays, and from the left on Mondays Thursdays and Saturdays.  Maybe he's trying to make himself out to be the country's first "Shock Jock Journalist"

There were numerous errors in his article as well which suggests his skills as a journalist are pretty minimal to put it politely.

So yes, to answer the main post.  It is a joke.

Moran not only shouldn't have made those comments (in 2003) for the obvious political reasons, his comments were actually wrong.  In Nov of 2004 bush got about 25% of the Jewish vote and Kerry got 75%.  That kind of runs against believing that our government is being led by AIPAC and Jewish influence.

Has stepped on my toes more than a time or two, but in this instance, I would suggest that you consult the audio of these proceedings because in this case, he's right on.

Even if this hearing had been fabricated, I'm sure Jim Moran would have found some other, real venue to make those statements.  Conyers et al. are ridiculous, too, but Moran is an issue near and dear to my heart.

It literally sickens me to see how many Jewish voters in the local community unquestioningly vote for him, even if they do so while holding their noses.  This blind allegiance to the "D" next to his name is disturbing...which is why I have eschewed it.  You see, liberals only like Israel when it is a peaceful, agrarian, socialistic kibbutz that absorbs relentless terrorist attacks and fights back only when its national existence is threatened by multiple Arab armies (a past status quo that is not likely to return).  And they say Republicans are "conservative" or "reactionary?"

Aah, if only I lived across the street, he would not be my Congressman.

Richard Dearlove, head of MI-6, did not write the memo. One of his staffers did. In the memo the STAFFER (some people use the word "aide") named Matthew Rycroft, summarizes a meeting between Dearlove and Tony Blair.  At that meeting Dearlove summarized his impressions of "recent talks" with SOMEONE in Washington (maybe Tenet, maybe others, but no one knows).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR200505120
1857.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158228,00.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html

It doesn't quote Bush. It doesn't quote Blair. It does not quote Tenet or anyone else in the Bush Administration. And the staffer was not present at the meeting(s) in Washington. I suppose I should thank you for inviting me to "clear something up."

Moreover, the Downing Street memo makes it abundantly clear that everyone in the British government believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs. I quote:

"The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work."

"On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions."

"For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary."

It is in this context that the memo's assertion about intelligence "being fixed around the policy" must be interpreted. The memo does not deny Washington's claim about WMDs. It explicitly backs those claims. The only reason we're talking about this is because the Democrats and their minions on the net like Kos don't have the intellectual heft to read a three-page memo in its entirety.

That Richard Dearlove told Tony Blair that George Bush, in July of 2002, was determined to go to war with Iraq, and was seeking justification to do so.  The memo, taken at face value, shows that everything that came after; the ultimatums, the speeches at the U.N., getting the U.N. inspectors on the ground, was a ruse to garner international and legal legitimacy and support for a predetermined outcome.  

In other words, if Dearlove correctly interpreted what he heard in Washington, then every time Bush said "Saddam can avoid war", "all Saddam has to do is comply with U.N. requirements", "war is not inevitable", or "we seek a peaceful solution", he was lying.  There was nothing that Saddam could do, short of abdicating and leaving the country I suppose, that would prevent the invasion.

Being a Michigander, I am quite distressed by the actions of John Conyers, a man who knows that, as long as he is protected by the Tammany Hall-like political machine that runs Detroit, he's politically invincible.  That sort of power can easily go to one's head, and it has been showing as he makes ridiculous statement after ridiculous gesture after ridiculous publicity stunt... knowing full well he'll get re-elected next year with over 90% of the vote, and probably unopposed.  It's reasoning like this that people started talking about term limits in the first place, as once a politician gets ensconced in a "safe" district (from the election standpoint only, as Detroit's about as unsafe as a major city can get) and doesn't have to worry much about reprisals from his constituents, they're free to say as much crazy stuff as they can.  This doesn't better the Detroit metro area, all it does is empower the enemies of the United States.  It's scary how much one can do today and still get some fawning press coverage, as, if this were World War II, Conyers and his ilk would probably be facing treason charges for conspiring to bring down the government leadership...

1. You don't know who Dearlove talked to, or what was said at those meetings.
   
2. You don't know, with any specificity, how Dearlove characterized said meetings to the British Prime Minister, or what words he actually used.
   
3. You also don't know that Rycroft accurately understood Dearlove's observations, or if he summarized them accurately.
   
4. Moreover, you have no idea if Dearlove's impressions of sentiment in Washington were even accurate.
   
5. Finally, you can not possibly, under any circumstances, know that Bush would have led this country to war even if Saddam had fully cooperated with UN resolution 1441.  Saddam did not cooperate with that resolution, so any speculation about what might have been is pure historical conjecture.
   
6. Your willingness to stretch a vague three-page memo full of generalities into a smoking gun that "proves" Bush lied to us demonstrates that you are the lowest form of ideologue.  You are willing to stretch the truth to damage your president and your country in the pursuit of some illusory political benefit.

I added a 6th point without thinking about the title.

I thought this topic was explained well here; the point being, don't confuse a powerful Jewish lobbying group for Israel with the entire Jewish population of America. It's true that AIPAC has a lot of influence (voted second only to the AARP); it's also true that they don't represent the opinions of the entire American Jewry. In the same way, you could argue that the AARP doesn't actually represent the opinions of all retired professionals.

Face it, ya'all. It's no joke. The country is finally waking up. You can fool some of the people some of the time...

....will continue to believe that Rep. John Conyers matters.

of qualifications.  The language of the memo is clear.  These are the facts

1. The memo summarizes a meeting between Dearlove and Blair.  The subject was meetings Dearlove had in Washington with his counterparts.  True, the memo does not say who he met with in Washington.  But Dearlove was head of MI6.  For him to go to Washington and not meet with George Tenet would be like Tony Blair going to Washington and not meeting with George Bush.
   
2.  If the contents of the memo accurately reflect Dearlove's belief's, then Dearlove came away from those meetings in Washington under the impression that the Bush administration had decided, by July 2002, to go to war in Iraq, no matter what Iraq did, and was simply seeking justification in the intelligence to do so.
   
3.  Throughout the summer and fall of 2002, the administration assured the American people and the international community that armed action was a last resort and that if Saddam cooperated with arms inspectors and fully complied with U.N. resolutions we would not go to war.
   
4.  The memo contradicts item 3).
   
5.  No one has disputed the authenticity of the memo.  Rather the response to questions about the memo has been along the lines of "it doesn't say what it says". Or it is vague and if you read too much into you are a bad people out to damage the president and hurt the country.

Well I plead guilty to trying to damage the president but not to trying to hurt the country.  I am trying to damage the president because it is my belief that he is the one who has hurt the country by leading us into this unneccessary, needless, wasteful war that has killed 1700 of our own brave soldiers, wounded 12,000 more, and killed and maimed countless thousands innocent Iraqis.  By doing so he left the job in Afghanistan unfinished and Osama Bin Laden still on the loose.  Now Afghanistan is slowly descending into a narcoterrorist state and Iraq is bleeding the military dry.  The policy in Iraq is leading us nowhere.  We have no discernable exit strategy and no realistic hopes of maintaining the status quo if it continues for much more than a year or so longer when we will literally run out of both men and materiel since the administration has done little to address the impending severe shortage of both.  In fact we are already literally eating our "seed corn" by mobilizing the OPFORs from both the NTC and Fort Polk.

. . .as I'm a bit busy today and am going out, but I loved this description of one of the guests:

Frances Boyle, University of Illinois Law Professor who has drawn up Impeachment papers, and more.

Aw, the little moonbats are so cute when they're all puffed up and growling, aren't they?

throughout the highest levels of British government.  To contend that Dearlove did not read it and approve it is just not credible.  To have a subordinate put out a summary of a meeting is SOP, but of course Dearlove would have read and approved the memo before it went out.

to the article

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/17/14206/1059

In an article that appeared on page A-9 on June 17, Rep. John Conyers(D-MI) was incorrectly labeled a "kook." He is actually a moonbat.

There are TWO memos, dated about two days apart.

The so called "Downing Street Memo" that has the looney left all atwitter about their drive to impeach GWB. "This is the smoking gun, we got him at last." Of course, the moonbats don't want to read the memo too close as it doesn't exactly say what they want it to say but, hey let's not let details screw up a really good fantasy.

Then there is the MI6 memo which clearly states that no decision has been taken as of that date. "We won't use that one because it makes us look like idiots." Just a tad too late guys.

In order to understand the memo you also have to understand not only British English but you have to understand Official British English. Brits use a number of words with subtle differences from the way we use them.

I erred. The second document is not an aide memoire, it is an official Cabinet Office paper, and it is genuine, dated two days before the DSM. This document has been published by The Times Online (London).

In addition to which there is apparently doubt about the provenance of the DSM.

particular piece of poppycock as our British cousins would say.

any link to where the provenance of the DSM has been questioned.  And I don't see how the the second memo, which is for much wider distribution, contradicts the DSM.  It seems to confirm in bureauspeak, that Washington is headed towards war, and we (the Brits) better be looking for a way to justify it.

Now, I really would like to know how you can read the DSM objectively and not come away with the conclusion that Dearlove believed that the Bush administration had decided to go to war and was merely trying to justify its decision.

which I haven't seen definitively stated, then we already have the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction report.

going to read it so I'll just point out that it traces reliance on "Curveball" back to 2000.  Have fun with that ;)

Ah, let me weigh this ever so carefully, lying about a blow job, impeachable, planning an invasion of a sovereign nation, OK. Hmmm, maybe I missing something.

"Merely" is the key word.  The US was actively looking to provide a clear legal context for the war, not 'merely justifying'.

Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998.  This public law dedicated the US to the position that Hussein should be removed from power.  Sometime in mid-September 2001 everyone in Virginia knew military action in Iraq was likely.  In April 2002 absolutely everyone knew the US was going to war in Iraq.  Even the reporter asking the question below knew the US was actively seeking military partners for war with Iraq.  To portray this as some dark secret is dishonest.

From a Blair/Bush press conference in Crawford Texas on 6 April 2002

Question

Mr President, you have yet to build an international coalition for military action against Iraq. Has the violence in the Middle East thwarted your efforts? And Prime Minister Blair, has Bush convinced you on the need for military action against Iraq?

President Bush

The Prime Minister and I of course talked about Iraq. We both recognise the danger of a man who is willing to kill his own people and harbouring and developing weapons of mass destruction.

This guy, Saddam Hussein, is a leader who gasses his own people, goes after people in his own neighbourhood with chemical weapons, he is a man who obviously has something to hide.

He told the world that he would show us that he would not develop weapons of mass destruction and yet over the past decade he has refused to do so. And the Prime Minister and

I both agree that he needs to prove that he isn't developing weapons of mass destruction.

I explained to the Prime Minister that the policy of my government is the removal of Saddam and that all options are on the table.

As for reading the DSM correctly the obvious explanation follows:

For smoking-gun enthusiasts, the key to the plot is that word "fixed," as in, the fix is in. As in, the intelligence and facts weren't what Bush needed, so he fixed them. The problem with this analysis, if you can call it that, is quite simple: If what is being described is chicanery and wrongdoing in the form of the Bush administration fabricating intelligence, how come nobody in the room with Blair when C drops this bombshell is sufficiently perturbed to do so much as ask a follow-up question? How come Blair's "sofa cabinet" just goes on earnestly discussing the military options?

I know, I know: Because they were in on it! You Brit lefties sit down.

In fact, exactly how is it that the official note-taker at this meeting, Blair's thirtysomething private secretary for foreign affairs--far junior to all others in the room--decided to record this momentous revelation with a colloquialism worthy of a James Cagney gangster movie? The answer is that he is doing no such thing. "Fix" here is clearly meant in its traditional sense, in the sort of English spoken by Oxbridge dons and MI6 directors--to make fast, to set in order, to arrange.

He is not Public School British.  He doesn't speak like a minister does.

So much crap to burn and so little time.

British Intelligence is a lot more centralized than ours.  As I recall, there are some 17 different agencies responsible for intelligence in Washington. Dearlove might have met with Tenet, but he might also have met with Condi Rice (head of the NSC at the time). He might also have met with officials from the Pentagon.  Or he might have met with all three. You still don't know who gave him the impression that the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

For that matter, do you really think that Rice/Tenet/Rumsfeld/anybody said "Sorry, Dearlove my boy, but we've decided to ignore the facts and fix the data our intelligence services gather around our policy of going to war with Iraq. No, at best this was an IMPRESSION that Dearlove gathered from meeting with somebody in Washington, even though as the rest of the memo makes clear, EVERYONE in the British government believed that Iraq had WMDs.  Given that fact, we can only guess what the MI6 chief meant when he implied that the American intelligence was somehow faulty.

The memo never says that Bush had made a final decision to go to war.  It says that he "wanted to remove Saddam, through military action" and that many in Washington viewed the war as "inevitable." It also says that people in Washington, including the NSC, were doubtful about the utility of taking the "UN route."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html

All of the above sentiments were perfectly rational and justifiable given the historical context (and what actually happened afterwards), but they do not indicate that a final decision had been made.  The only thing we know for certain is that over the next eight months after the memo was written the U.S. government, in spite of its reservations about giving Saddam more time by pursuing UN diplomacy, continued to press its case in that august and useless body. Even if the Rycroft memo did claim that a final decision had been made, to believe a mid-level British staffer (Oh, I'm so sorry, "aide") in the face of plain historical fact betrays the mindset of a person with a political vendetta.

Also, while I certainly don't doubt the authenticity of the memo (it was clearly written by the person to whom it was attributed), that doesn't mean that you can make it say whatever the he** you want it to say.  I might as well tell you that most political blogs are rather unfriendly to literary deconstruction.

Finally, you are within your rights to dislike (even hate) the president for leading us into war. But we had an election a few months ago, and virtually the only issue talked about in that election was the Iraq war.  Your side lost.  You don't have to like it.  You don't even have to get over it. But you do have to live with it. And when you try to fabricate evidence to impugn the integrity of our government and our president you have gone way over the line.

The decision was made to rid Iraq of Hussein.

The lead-up was not a ruse, it was a manoeuvre to force Hussein out either peacefully, by international agreement, or by unilateral force, whatever.  It was pretty clear at the time.

"For that matter, do you really think that Rice/Tenet/Rumsfeld/anybody said "Sorry, Dearlove my boy, but we've decided to ignore the facts and fix the data our intelligence services gather around our policy of going to war with Iraq.""

Things like this make me not so sure.

Article 2. Section. 2.

Clause 1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;

Planning invasions is part of the job.

Getting interns hired by powerful political friends so that they will lie in court is not in the Constitution.

Your analysis is spot on.

piece of evidence.  Interpreted this memo differently from you, definitely, but fabricated evidence no way.

The simple truth is there were no WMDs, there was no active nuclear program, there was no meaningful connection with Al Qaeda.  Even the Administration now admits that all the WMDs were probably destroyed shortly after the first Gulf War.  There is no doubt that, knowing what we know now, that the Administration overstated the evidence they did have, relied on less than reliable sources, ignored evidence that contradicted the case they were trying to build, intentionally suppressed and attempted to smear anyone who contradicted their evidence (e.g., Scott Ritter), and hyped evidence even when their own experts were telling them that what they were telling the public was incorrect (e.g., the aluminum tubes).

So forgive me if I believe that the President deliberately lied to the country and that he planned to invade Iraq eventhough he claimed that by complying with U.N. resolutions Saddam could avoid war.  And since I didn't vote for him I see no reason to shrug my shoulders and say, "gee, I guess I was wrong, Saddam did have WMDs after all and they Rumsfeld was right, he did know exactly where they were".  

I wish there was some way that Clinton's sex life would go away but some bozo keeps dropping it in the discusssion.

... lying about a blow job impeachable... <- your statement

... lying to a Grand Jury under oath about {insert just about anything here} impeachable... <- the truth

You guys on the left always like to try to make the Clinton affair about the sex; you understand that Americans are a tolerant lot about personal foibles. As long as you can keep the "BJ" in and the "under oath" out of the conversation it makes it OK.

...There is no doubt that, knowing what we know now, that the Administration overstated the evidence...

Knowing what I will know Sunday morning I could buy the winning lottery ticket tonight.

Regretably it doesn't work that way, but the left apparently lives in a universe where it does. So how come you guys don't win the lottery every week?

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

I think if you were to apply yourself as closely to the posts above yours as you do to memos leaked to the English press you might find that there is small to none at all mention of your making up evidence.  What you might find is that some people have discovered that literary criticism of literary works is difficult but rewarding in its discoveries and literary criticism of small bits of official communication is not difficult but not rewarding in its discoveries because the bits of communication can lend themselves very easily to many theories, some more elegant than others.

As to the UN resolutions, just as in the First Gulf War, part of taking a country to war is fashion the diplomatic demands in such a way that to comply with them is as dangerous for your opponent as armed conflict.  After all it was US law to remove Hussein, and as he well knew, enough compliance with the UN would undercut his dictatorship as much as the 3rd Division, but not as fast.

...relied on less than reliable sources...

You mean like those remarkably unreliable sources such as British, French, German, Israeli, Danish, Egyptian, etc., intelligence services?

...smear anyone who contradicted their evidence (e.g., Scott Ritter)...

Ritter needed no one to smear him, he's done a fine job all by himself.

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

Maybe we do make up our intelligence out of whole cloth, I don't think so, but maybe..

The point is do you think Rice would say, "Hey we just made this garbage up, so add anything juicy you want to?" or would she (or Bolton) say, "Hey this is real, this is dangerous, see you in Havana."?

-- retroactively--

Hence the bitterness, all those wasted tickets.

smear anyone who contradicted their evidence (e.g., Scott Ritter)

No, that was me. I have a satellite in orbit that emits mind-control rays. I used it to make Ritter chat up 14-year-olds on the Internet and meet them at Burger King to choke a chicken sandwich.

Howard Dean's "Eeeeyyaarrgh"? My cat jumped up on the keyboard. Sorry.

Disclaimer: I do not really have a cat. I am a dog person.

the link you provided from the Miami Herald because the Herald required that I register first.  That means I wont do it, because I find registering at multiple news websites cluters my inbox. Otherwise, I'd be glad to read it.

The Herald is out local paper and I stopped reading it two years ago. If they were any further left they'd be half way out in the Gulf of Mexico.

What I was referring to, of which I'm sure you are aware, is the allegation that Bolton sought to make statements about the bio-weapon capabilities of Cuba that he knew intelligence did not support.  He was stopped luckily, by an analyst who literally put his job on the line in a confrontation over Bolton's speech.

It proves nothing about the Downing Memos and pre-war decisions, but it prevents me from assuming that no one in the Bush administration would stretch or manipulate intelligence in order to further policy they believe to be correct.

I mean sources like Chalabi and "curveball".  Besides the inspectors were in and Saddam were letting them do their job they were not finding anything eventhough we kept insisting we knew where the weapons facilities were. The facts on the ground were beginning to make the prevailing consensus intelligence look dubious.

to criticize Ritter's personal life, he was right about the WMDs.

about what is in a memo, even an obvious lie that anyone who can read three pages will discover, you have in effect fabricated evidence. The simple truth is that the Downing Street Memo does not say everything that you say it says, and what it does say is vague and speculative.

Re: "There is no doubt that, knowing what we know now, that the Administration overstated the evidence they did have, relied on less than reliable sources, ignored evidence that contradicted the case they were trying to build, intentionally suppressed and attempted to smear anyone who contradicted their evidence (e.g., Scott Ritter), and hyped evidence even when their own experts were telling them that what they were telling the public was incorrect (e.g., the aluminum tubes)."

Speak for yourself bud. There may be no doubt in your mind, but not in most people's minds. The only point I am willing to concede is the business about reliable sources.  Many of their sources (including every foreign intelligence agency they consulted) were wrong. But what president would have chosen to ignore them, given the stakes?  Certainly not Clinton, who chose to bomb Iraq on the same basis.

What conerns me is the attempt here to bury and/or ignore strong intelligence that does not support the policy that Bolton would like to enact.  In this case the CIA did not believe that Cuba had biological weapons, and I think it's appaling that any administration official would disregard that for no other reason than that he would like the US to take a more aggressive stance towards Castro.

Rice could say "It's real and dangerous"-- but if she has to stretch and ignore intelligence to do that, then she might as well just be pulling things out of thin air.

Again, this doesn't prove anything one way or the other in regard to pre-Iraq decisions.  But it does show, at least to me, that we cannot simply assume that the administration would categorically refuse to "set up" facts around existing policy decisions.

You "fact" that you meant Chalabi et al does not change the "fact" that there were other, apparently in your mind equally unreliable, source including but not limited to British, French, German, Danish, Israeli, Egyptian, et al, intelligence services, all of whom were telling us and each other that Saddam had WMD.

The assertion that Chalabi may, or may not, have been a scum-sucking liar does not discredit the other national intelligence services that believed there were WMD.

In fact several places in the {cue ominous impeachment-type music here} infamous Downing Street Memo the writer reports discussion of WMD. On the second page of the document the writer reports:

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.

Now I may be particularly dumb (I am after all a white, Christian, never-worked-an-honest-day-in-my-life, gun-owning, Republican) but that paragraph sounds a lot like there was some concern in Downing Street that Saddam might use those WMD that he didn't have.

One of the rules is that if you want to use the first page of the document, you have to use the other pages as well.

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

must have known it was overstating the evidence at the time.  They were constantly saying things like there is "no doubt" that Saddam had WMDs or that it "was certain" he had an active program, had contacts with Al Qaeda, or was restarting his nuclear program  or we "knew" exactly where the WMDs were.  We could not have known any of these things with such certainty because it turns out none of these things were true.  At the very best the administration was deliberately exaggerating the strength of the intelligence and evidence they had to sell the case for war.

...In this case the CIA did not believe that Cuba had biological weapons...

Yes and the CIA also missed:

a) the launch of North Korea's first ICBM;

b) the first Indian (or was that Pakistan) nuclear test;

c) the total collapse of the Soviet Union;

d) the 9/11 attack;

e) the North Korean nuclear program.

Don't get me wrong, I think the CIA does a fairly good job given some of the ridiculous restrictions under which they were operating. But they missed those events; I'd say there is a non-zero probability they are wrong about a possible Cuban biological weapons program.

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

...the Administration must have known it was overstating the evidence at the time...

Why is this true, because you say it is? Because the after-action results show the pre-action information to be wrong?

f) Iraq didn't have WMDs, a nuclear program or connections with Al Qaeda

There is a chance that the CIA could be wrong again.  And I don't doubt that Bolton/Rice believe that Cuba is dangerous.

But if they are using that belief to enact policy, it would be nice if they had evidence to support it.  If they are not getting this from the CIA, then I'm not sure where their smoking gun is.

And it is one thing to say Cuba could have bio-weapons if the CIA is wrong-- another thing entirely to say the Cuba does in fact have bio-weapons, and anyone who disagree should be fired.

denotes absolute certainty.  If you are absolutely certain about something that is untrue you are either a fool or you are being deceptive.

...is like talking to the cat, only it isn't anywhere near as productive.

What does your little stinkbomb have to do with the conversation?

But you also don't see us ramping up to invade Cuba.

The level of action is the union of the nature of the threat, the everity of the threat and the likelihood of the threat.

In the case of Cuba, if Fidel has bioweapons it is certainly a potential threat. But the probability that he will try to use them against us is probably very, very, very low. And, it appears that there is no evidence that he has any intention of providing them to a third party to use against us. So we work the problem a different way. Makes sense to me.

I really wanted to make a narrow point about manipulating intelligence, whether or not that intelligence was eventually used to justify a war.

If they did ignore or manipulate intelligence in this instance, do you think that they would be squeamish about doing the same in Iraq?  It seems obvious that their belief that Iraq was dangerous is far more fundamental than their fear of Cuba-- so why wouldn't manipulation of intelligence be justified to enact policy in an area that was far more important?

On a tangential note, it's clear that both Cuba and Iraq have both been antagonistic to the US over the years.  And they have had equal justification for not attacking us-- namely the fact that they would be summarily destroyed.  And I have not seen evidence showing that Saddam was thinking of giving his non-existent WMDs to third parties either.  If you know of such evidence, I would be glad to read it over.

... does not make you a fool or deceptive, it merely makes you wrong.

Wrong is not even a sin, much less an impeachable offense under the Constitution, no matter how much you want it to be.

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

Or dead on because of the facts he presents?

About the only thing he really mentions that has any substance rather than smear is that Conyers is the only member of congress to mention the DSM on the floor.  That is patently false, as Conyers points out in his response.

His smears about the "Mr. Chairman" title are wrong, as Conyers also points out in his letter to Milbank.  

And (although I haven't heard the entire audio myself to verify), the comments about aides trying to end the event aren't true either.

So if you take out all of that, what's left to the article?  Pretty much nothing, in my opinion.

Someone who gets 90 percent of the vote should face treason charges if they're critical of the government's leadership?  

If he gets a huge percentage of the vote, then he must be doing things that his consituents approve of, or he wouldn't be getting re-elected so easily.

Its preposterous to imply Conyer's actions are treasonous after what the GOP did to Clinton.

This is good I am starting to get it.  It is ok to spend millions investigating every thing about Clinton till you find a tragic personal flaw and then corner him. That's in the constitution right?  But if you lead a country into war under false pretenses costing thousands of lives that is in the constitution too. Sorry guys, you lack the moral principles or strength to get beyond your biases.

But if you lead a country into war under false pretenses costing thousands of lives that is in the constitution too.

This is not 1964, and 9/11 is not the Gulf of Tonkin incident. We know you think you're going to have a happy re-run of the glory days of anti-war activism, but unfortunately for you, there are enough people around who remember what happened last time that we are not going to let you get away with it.

This BS is entirely too transparent. We are not psychiatrists, so we have no clue what kind of self-hatred motivates you guys to do this stuff to your own country. But enough of it. You did it once. You not gonna do it a second time.

If you are incapable of seeing the larger problem of terrorism, and where it's coming from, and why, that is not our deficiency. It is yours. And we are not going to allow you to impose your puerile, short-term views on the rest of us.

There is a huge struggle ahead of us, and Iraq is only the beginning of it. One despot at a time, we are going to have to take these clowns down, free their people, and show them that there is more to life than living like dogs and hating The Great Satan. No doubt you will hate every minute of it.

But it's either that, or turn our own country into a police state so that we can make sure that some Atta Boy isn't about to poison the water supply for a city of two million.

We didn't write this Koran, and we didn't keep a dozen nations living in the 7th century while we built palaces with gold toilets. The Saddams, the Assads, and the Royal Families did that. I'm afraid it's time for them to go, because we are on the verge of an era in human history when ten guys with a grudge can kill a million people.

We know you don't see any of that. You don't want to see it. You hate yourselves so much that you actually want those guys to come over here and kill us all. Because we deserve it. We're bad.

Well, we don't see it that way. And we don't want to live in constant fear of anthrax, airplanes, suicide bombers, and whatever else they come up with.

You can take your 1960's anti-war hippie act to the Democratic Convention with you for all we care. In fact, we hope you do. Because no one sane wants what you want. No one sane wants this country's people killed in terrorist violence.

Don't tell us that you know better than we do how to stop it. You had eight years to stop it, and look what happened. The Atta Boys bombed the WTC the first time in 1993. They bombed embassies. They did all kinds of stuff. What did your guys do? Nothing. Finally they came back and finished the job on the WTC, and now you want to do nothing again.

The short answer to which is, "no."

the Vice President from August 26, 2002:

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. emphasis mine

Mr. Cheney used the phrase "no doubt" twice in that two sentence statement.  Now if he had used a phrase like "we believe" or "intelligence indicates" I would say, fine, that's okay, he was wrong but relied on bad intelligence.  But that's not what he said.  "No doubt" means they were absolutely certain and had incotrivertable evidence.  Obviously they didn't, because no such evidence existed, because the weapons didn't exist.  So either someone had fabricated the evidence and given it to the Administration, or the Vice President was being deliberately deceptive in overstating the strength of the evidence.

And not only does the statement denote a level of certainty that simply does not exist but the second sentence makes a statement about Saddam Hussein's state of mind that nobody except his closest confidants, and maybe not even them, would be privy to.

I swear that you guys must have some sort of brain implant that rearranges words before they get processed.

Lets try this one more time in hopes that your filter hasn't kicked in yet this morning:

Bill Clinton

• Lying under oath to a Grand Jury, regardless of what the Grand Jury was investigating, is a crime.
  
• Clinton knowingly lied under oath to a Grand Jury
  
• Comitting a felony qualifies as '...high crimes and misdemeanors...' as required by the Constitution for impeachment.

George Bush

• Took the country to war based on intelligence information that showed WMD and active ties to terrorists
  
• The informtion was wrong
  
• Being wrong is does not meet the definition of '...high crimes and misdemeanors...' as required by the Constitution for impeachment.

As clearly shown by the remarks of people like Howard Dean and Richard Durbin, the left still has no interest in truth, and that facts are no more important today than they were in the time of Vietnam.

Now, will you people take Bill clinton's sex life and go play with it somewhere else, the adults are not interested.

Now that's funny, I'll have to remember that one.

knew that the intelligence was inaccurate or fabricated intelligence to justify the case for war, that would constitute high crimes and misdemeanors.  I assume that would be basis of an articles of impeachment if such articles were relying on the DSM as part of the evidence.

So the operative question is whether the administration knew the information was wrong and used it anyway or just made up the information to justify the war they were determined to fight.  There is no doubt they overstated the reliabilty of the intelligence.

If your premise was true then I suppose you could cobble up a reason to hold hearings. I would not, however suggest introducing the DSM, let alone relying on it; Americans generally frown on using the words of foreigners on which to base our decisions, and I'd guess they wouldn't put much stock in the words of  questionable British document forming the basis for a presidential impeachment hearing. It would probably be stupid, but yes you could do it. Of course, first you have to get by the inconvenient little fact that the looney left does not come anywhere near control of the House so the the bar is pretty high to start with.

And if your premise is correct that an administration deliberately used incorrect information to provide support of the actions of the nation then I submit that George Bush would not be the 43rd President of the United States; he'd be about number 12, the rest having been impeached along the way. And your man Clinton would have been nailed for a lot more than lying under oath; Mogadishu comes quickly to mind.

I guess you guys on the left think that national governments, and not just ours, all behave like the kids in your kindergarten class were told to behave.

I used to have a favorite teddy bear that went with me everywhere. And then I grew up.

Democratic majority in both houses articles of impeachment don't have a snowballs chance in hell.

But if lying to a Grand Jury about an incident that had absolutely nothing to do with the purpose of the investigation in the first place is an impeachable offense then lying to the Congress and the nation to invade another country most certainly is.  The Republicans lowered the bar, they now must live with the consequences.

is a crime and it makes no difference what the investigation was about, its a crime all of its own.

You are presuming that George Bush lied. I think we've been over this ground before. Being wrong is not a crime --- there is no evidence, much less proof, that he lied.

you are beyond hope, but just in case there's still a chance to reach you, read this:

http://www.redstate.org/comments/2005/6/18/111138/305/12#12

or this:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/

I'm sorry, but your statement does not hold water.

about Bolton is true, it doesn't mean anything to this particular case.  Nobody in the administration, not Bolton or anybody else, would tell visiting foreign officials that they were fabricating evidence, even if that were true.  But that is just what the crowd that is howling about the Downing Street Memo would have us believe: that the memo contains a third hand admission of guilt by someone (we know not who) in the Bush Administration. Get it?

There were no WMD's

Since you provided the links to the Duelfer Report I will provide the direct quotes from your link:

While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991.  Which means there were none to ship to Syria in 2002 and 2003.

In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced BW weapons quickly. ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes. So no active Bioweapons program after 1996 either.

In spite of exhaustive investigation, ISG found no evidence that Iraq possessed, or was developing BW agent production systems mounted on road vehicles or railway wagons. I guess that was just bad intelligence too.

Iraq Survey Group (ISG) discovered further evidence of the maturity and significance of the pre-1991 Iraqi Nuclear Program but found that Iraq's ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after that date.  The chance of the smoking gun being a mushroom cloud was become less, not more, likely.

impeachment trial that would be the issue in dispute.  The prosecution would claim that the President knowingly lied to the country and Congress.  The President's defense would be that he never lied, he acted on intelligence he believed at the time to be accurate and true.  In legal parlance it's called an affirmative defense.  This is a common defense in white collar crimes where there is no dispute about whether certain acts occurred, just whether the the acts in question constituted a crime (the Dennis Kozlowski case is a perfect example).  Each side would present their evidence and the Senate would act as the Jury.  That is the process the Founders envisioned.

Telling the people a lie is not a crime.

(McNally v.

United States, 483 U.S. 350)

It is only a crime if you are under oath.  Ask any FOB, they can tell you all about what lies are crimes and which ones are not.

is the standard in the Constitution.  The "misdemeanors" part of the phrase implies a gross negligence in office or abuse of power.  Leading the country to war by deliberately lying should qualify.

read the entire report.

Write your Congressman.

You have to understand, all of this Gitmo stuff is just so much cr*p. It's all about their hypothetical impeachment --- it's all about payback. Payback for Clinton, payback for 2000, payback for 2004; just payback.

And the scent of payback is a heady aroma. Now they want that taste and, like 'crack', what they have to do, who they have to harm, to get it really doesn't matter.

Apparently, the Democrats were not taking notes during the Clinton years while frustrated, angry conservatives (including myself, to some degree)indulged every fact and fiction regarding the evil of the Clintons. If too many fictions are mixed with the facts, the public eventually gets disgusted more with the accusers than their target.  Now it is the Democrats throwing bread and circuses to their base, which appears to consist largely of people who were about six years old when Clinton was elected and have  never been taught by those in their party who should've learned from the excess of their opponents.  

Just write a rousing Broadway musical, maybe call it "Chimpeach!", and let it run for 10 or 20 years to rave reviews, even though Republicans "occupy" the White House during the entire run.    

For someone to say to British intelligence:  "We need to go to Iraq.  It's important.  What kind of intelligence do you have that can help us convince the American people.  No, No, No, don't bother with the contradictory stuff-- just the parts we can use."

We were talking about the war in Iraq.  If you want to talk about grounds for impeachment in other areas, I can certainly join that discussion.

He's running against the Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and it's unlikely the TN GOP would dump a Majority Leader for a newcomer.

There are people out there (myself included) who really do care about the rule of law, human rights, America's standing in the international community, humane treatment of detainees no matter what crime they may have committed, and who think this country should never mistreat anyone for any reason.

There are also some of us who think that the war in Iraq was a horrible mistake and has been compounded by a horribly bungled occupation and think that this Administration is being so unrealistic about the situation in Iraq that it is headed towards disaster.

When you speak on the basis of imperfect knowledge and are later found to be incorrect that is not a lie, that is the weather.

September 14, 2002

He has broken every pledge he made to the United Nations and the world since his invasion of Kuwait was rolled back in 1991. Sixteen times the United Nations Security Council has passed resolutions designed to ensure that Iraq does not pose a threat to international peace and security. Saddam Hussein has violated every one of these 16 resolutions -- not once, but many times.

Saddam Hussein's regime continues to support terrorist groups and to oppress its civilian population. It refuses to account for missing Gulf War personnel, or to end illicit trade outside the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. And although the regime agreed in 1991 to destroy and stop developing all weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, it has broken every aspect of this fundamental pledge. [all true]

Today this regime likely maintains stockpiles of chemical and biological agents, and is improving and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical and biological weapons. Today Saddam Hussein has the scientists and infrastructure for a nuclear weapons program, and has illicitly sought to purchase the equipment needed to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. [best info from at least three foreign intel sources] Should his regime acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year. [true]

September 19, 2002

For 11 years, they have deceived the world. They have said, we'll conform to resolutions. They've never conformed to resolutions. They've never conformed to the agreement that they laid out 11 years ago. Sixteen times they've defied Security resolutions. [true]

September 24, 2002

Congress must act now to pass a resolution which will hold Saddam Hussein to account for a decade of defiance.

[the last word from the President to the Congress was not that wmd required immediate action, althouugh it seemed to do, the last word was about the 11 years of defiance.]

Who think that those people have been saying that, and worse, since the very first day of the war and that they are wrong, and they have been wrong, since the beginning.

We can begin with the professorate and people like Douglass Cassell at Northwestern University, who has heavily implied on National Public Radio that we would be confronting tremendous numbers of refugees, hundreds of thousands of dead on both sides, and the possibility of nuclear weapons being used against Israel as a result of the war.  If nobody in the Administration believed that Saddam had WMD, and they cooked the books to invent them, why did Doug Cassell, this voice who has been so opposed to the Administration from the beginning, believe they might?  Was he duped too?  

Why has National Public Radio not called Doug Cassell on the carpet for all of the spectacularly wrong predictions he made in the runup to the war?  Surely if he could speculate that Israel might be hit with a nuke he must have had some reasonable basis for assuming that Saddam might have them...yes?  

But those things are never heard.  Nobody as talked for a moment about Peter Arnett's predictions that the end was near in the first f