Rove Wanted Chemical Weapons Dead And Buried. Very Wise Politics.

Pun intended: Rush Limbaugh's claim that the chemical weapons which were reported this week to have been found several years ago in Iraq constitute a smoking gun in the hands of Sadaam Hussein is a crock of manure.

Rush concedes

The weapons of mass destruction The Daily Beast is talking about is not the same weapons that both Republicans and Democrats and every intelligence service in the world claimed were being manufactured by Saddam, 1998-2003.  These are not the WMD we're talking about.  These were basically chemical weapons that are prior to 1991.

But then he contends

It doesn't matter.  They were found in 2004.  They were discovered by US troops in 2004 and they show that Saddam was investing and manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. 

They show that Saddam was in violation of all of those UN resolutions.  He was in violation of the first Gulf War ceasefire.  And Saddam's violation of the first Gulf War ceasefire, including shooting at our planes, was enough on its own to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq....

It could have spelled out exactly who Saddam Hussein was for anybody who didn't want to believe it. It could have spelled out exactly why Saddam had to be targeted.  It would have spelled out and made clear why Saddam Hussein had to go.  

Everyone knew who Sadaam Hussein was and everyone then and since has acknowledged it.  There was no prominent domestic supporter- or apologist- of the Iraqi president. We knew from the time of Iraq-Iran War, recognized Hussein's policy of genocide against the Kurds, and realized that he had at one time stockpiled chemical and biological weapons (photograph below depicting result of an actual weapon of mass destruction, in Hiroshima, from Nuclear Darkness).

We understood, further, that U.S. and British intelligence services had reported that the dictator probably had an active chemical and/or biological weapons program, though it was not fully understood that the intelligence had been twisted by the Administration to justify the war it was determined to launch. It was known- though under emphasized- that Mohamed ElBaradei shortly before the invasion had testified that the International Atomic Energy Agency had found no nuclear weapons activity in Iraq.

The existence of an evil dictator, though, is not enough to justify starting a war, notwithstanding Rush Limbaugh's perspective.   Additionally, Limbaugh distorts the story out of all proportion. He says

And Saddam was thumbing his nose at the UN.  But for a chance to destroy the Republican Party, the Bush administration, and maybe even parts of the military for a while? "To hell with the UN! We'll destroy the Republican Party," and they did....

Look at all that turned out to have been accurate about this.  If I'm a member of the Democrat Party all during this, I have to be really scratching my head, saying, "Why are these guys shutting up?  Why are we getting away with this?  Why are they letting us get away with lying about them and this war every day?" And after a while you stop asking and you just keep piling the lies on top of one another. 

What we're told here is, the active theory was, "Well, that's 2003, 2004, 2005.  We lost that battle. We didn't find any weapons of mass destruction then, and it just won't work to tell everybody we have now, 'cause they won't believe us and they'll think we're lying. Better to let sleeping dogs lie and just move on to the next news story."  Those five years drove me nuts, too.  Not insane with rage, but disbelief that the news was so filled with lies and so filled with distortions every day, with not one day of reality.

Rove kept quiet not because he was worried "they won't believe us and they'll think we're lying." He suppressed the story because his boss, GW Bush otherwise would have been routed in the upcoming election.   Honesty had little to do with it. Two days before Eli Lake's story in The Daily Beast, CJ Shivers of The New York Times had reported

The discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims.

Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.

The weapons would not, could not, have been used against the "homeland," the USA.  Nor could they, would they, have been successfully deployed against the Kurds or any of Hussein's enemies. Worse still,

In case after case, participants said, analysis of these warheads and shells reaffirmed intelligence failures. First, the American government did not find what it had been looking for at the war’s outset, then it failed to prepare its troops and medical corps for the aged weapons it did find.

It was American soldiers, albeit to a limited degree, who were endangered by the mustard gas or residual sarin the US government denied existed.  And now, the unearthed weapons present a threat to the region they may not have if the Bush Administration not effectively shut down the weapons inspection regime prior to the war. Shivers continues

As Iraq has been shaken anew by violence, and past security gains have collapsed amid Sunni-Shiite bloodletting and the rise of the Islamic State, this long-hidden chronicle illuminates the persistent risks of the country’s abandoned chemical weapons.

Many chemical weapons incidents clustered around the ruins of the Muthanna State Establishment, the center of Iraqi chemical agent production in the 1980s.

Since June, the compound has been held by the Islamic State, the world’s most radical and violent jihadist group. In a letter sent to the United Nations this summer, the Iraqi government said that about 2,500 corroded chemical rockets remained on the grounds, and that Iraqi officials had witnessed intruders looting equipment before militants shut down the surveillance cameras.

During his rant, the man who continually derides Democrats as "low information voters" charged Newsweek is "a bumbling, leftist operation."  Presumably corrected by his producer during the commercial break, he returned to admit "yes, yes, yes. I know Eli Lake is a solid conservative." Limbaugh now knows Lake is a foreign policy analyst rather than left-wing activist, but he still doesn't understand that if it hadn't been for Karl Rove burying the chemical weapons story, he would have spent less time the following four years defending George W. Bush than condemning President Kerry.



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I'll Blame It On Iraq

Appearing at an Independence Day Tea Party in the Houston area, Samuel Wurzelbacher declared

I believe we need to spend a little more on illegal immigrants get them the (expletive) out of our (expletive) country, and close the borders down. We can do it.

We’ve got the greatest military in the world and you’re telling me we can’t close our borders- that’s just ridiculous.

In January, President Bush rejected an Israeli request to fly through Iraqi airspace, controlled by the U.S.A., to bomb Iranian underground nuclear facilities. On Meet The Press last Sunday, Vice President Biden, while asserting that Israel is a sovereign nation with a right to attack Iraq, refused to reveal whether the Obama Administration would give Israel the right to fly over Iraq to attack Iran. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reluctant to seek permission, given that it probably would be denied and it's highly unlikely Tel Aviv would undertake such an attack without U.S. authorization.

It's not as if Iran's nuclear program poses no threat. In early June, shortly before the "election" in Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency noted Iran had increased its supply of low-grade enriched uranium by 30 percent to nearly 3,000 pounds since its last quarterly report. The low-grade variety is used in nuclear reactors but

Scientists say 3,000 pounds of low-enriched, or reactor-grade, uranium of the type Iran has would be more than enough to build a single nuclear weapon if Iran were to boot out international inspectors, renege on treaty obligations and further refine its supplies....

The agency (the U.N. Security Council, which has passed several resolutions asking Iran to stop enriching uranium) report also says that Iran continues to deny it access to the heavy-water reactor near the west-central city of Arak and has not yet provided it with design information for a planned nuclear power plant near the southwestern Iranian town of Darkhovin. Iran says that under its treaty obligations, it need not provide such information until just before it introduces nuclear material to a site.

And the BBC reports "The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says he believes Iran is mastering nuclear technology and it wants the option of a nuclear weapon." (Iran wants the option of a nuclear weapon as Sarah Palin has opted out as governor of Alaska in part so she can maintain the option of a presidential run in 2012. No parallel, but never waste an opportunity to tie Iran to an enemy of the U.S.A.) And el Baradei (who has stepped aside as director but supports engagement with Iran) is not to be ignored, given that in early 2003, while Condoleezza Rice was dreaming of mushroom clouds, he warned the world that Iraq did not have an active nuclear program. (Unfortunately, that was pre-1/09, when we had a President who did not believe we were part of the world community.)

Perhaps there would be no Israel and/or American air strike upon Iraqi facilities anyway, given the possibility that some are underground and the likelihood they are scattered. Still, it is sobering that the misbegotten war in Iraq has limited the options of the free world in dealing with a more important nation, Iran. That was headed by genocidal tyrant Saddaam Hussein, who probably would have loved to see bombs rained down on Iran and reportedly was contemplating a "security agreement with the US to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region."

Which brings us back to illegal immigration, which populist liberals everywhere recognize (or should recognize) lowers wage rates and benefits for workers in the U.S.A. More personnel at the border would enhance the effort to stem the tide (temporarily reduced because of recession), as President Obama recognizes. But as for the U.S. military, as Joe the Plumber advocates? Sorry, Sam- it's in Iraq in a war which has proven a boon for terrorism and Tehran.

Bolton Foolishness

If John Bolton was right, as I think he was, when on 6/26/08 on GOP TV's "Hannity and Colmes" he criticized the Bush Administration on North Korea, he was wrong when in the same appearance he rapped International Atomic Energy Administrator Mohamed ElBaredei. Bolton claimed that ElBaradei is "an apologist for Iran," as he did in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer in November, 2007 (video and partial transcript from Think Progress).

The regime occupying Washington, D.C. the past 7+ years long has considered ElBaradei an enemy, as this excerpt from a Washington Post article of 12/12/04 reveals:

The Bush administration has dozens of intercepts of Mohamed ElBaradei's phone calls with Iranian diplomats and is scrutinizing them in search of ammunition to oust him as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to three U.S. government officials.

When it issued its "(The) Status Of Nuclear Weapons Inspections: An Update on March 7, 2003, the IAEA vowed to continue inspections. However, it had found no attempt by Baghdad to import uranium, nor aluminum tubes for centrifuge enrichment and concluded "after three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq." No nuclear weapons program- no weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, we invaded Iraq with its Baathist regime a sworn enemy of Teheran, and have for our troubles Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a friend of the Iranians. And John Bolton, with no sense of irony, accuses ElBaradei, whose report could have kept us from invading Iraq and strengthening Iran, of being "an apologist for Iran." This could be a parallel universe- or just another day in the Bush Administration.

Remember Those Nuclear Weapons?

As a Democrat, my heart leaped a few weeks ago at very hopeful news. Condoleezza Rice's name was floated as a possible veep selection for John McCain.

Oh, I knew there was almost no chance. Rice is not associated with any state and therefore would be unlikely to bring any particular electoral votes into the Repub column. Further, there is no indication that she has any particular knowledge of, or interest in, anything except foreign policy- not unlike the fellow at the head of the ticket. Presumably, her name was thrown out as a Repub bid for the "political correctnesss" so many of zthem excoriate, figuring that any black at the tail end of the GOP ticket would take some of the wind out of Obama's sails. That's fairly absurd, but the idea of taking black Americans for granted by the party that claims the Democratic Party does so is not surprising.

Recently, though, as the San Diego Union-Tribune's website reported on 3/21/08:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she called Obama to apologize for the unauthorized access to his computerized passport file by three department contract workers, two of whom were fired over the incidents.
“I told him that I was sorry and I told him that I myself would be very disturbed if I learned that somebody had looked into my passport file and therefore, I will stay on top of it and get to the bottom of it,” Rice told reporters.

Give her credit for effort here, though given Rice's record (think Middle East peace process and U.S.-Russian relations), I wouldn't assume any effort will be met by success. Far better would be a mere acknowledgement of a mistake that she made a few years ago. I bring you back an interview she had with Wolf Blitzer on September 8, 2003, which the CNN anchorman reported on January 10, 2003: "Dr. Rice then said something that was ominous and made headlines around the world. 'The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'"

The famous "mushroom cloud." Condi Rice in the vanguard of the fear merchants of the Bush Administration. On March 7, 2003, twelve days before the President launched Gulf War II, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei reported in "The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update"

There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.
There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.
There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminium tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminium tubes in question.
Although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in a centrifuge enrichment programme.
As I stated above, the IAEA will continue further to scrutinize and investigate all of the above issues.

And the relevant conclusion: after three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.

What have we heard from the foreign policy "expert" of the Bush regime, Condoleezza Rice? No apology and no acknowledgement that she misled the American people. The idea that this individual could even be considered for national, elective office demonstrates the contempt for the truth- and lack of talent- of the Republican Party.