"You can not come back to Canada until you have been criminally rehabilitated." Ann Wright, who had 29 years of military and govt service, resigned in protest on the eve of the Iraq War from her position as deputy ambassador to Mongolia. In this hour long talk, she discusses her story and the story of several others from various countries who resigned in protest. Her new book, Dissent: Voices of Conscience, details the story of 24 people who resigned in protest. [more inside]
posted by nooneyouknow on Nov 6, 2008 - 6 comments

Senate Intelligence Committee Unveils Final Phase II Reports on Prewar Iraq Intelligence. Phase II Report on Public Statements [PDF] and Phase II Report on DoD Policy Office [PDF]. This may come as a shock, but most of what the Bush Administration said about Iraq wasn't true. Republican co-chair Bond, Kit Bond, says the reports are "political theatre." [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha on Jun 5, 2008 - 70 comments

Wilson et al v. McConnell et al. This site has all the legal documents surrounding Valerie Plame's legal case against the CIA over her new book. CIA censors blacked out 10 percent of the copy, as can seen in this excerpt from the book, and Plame is not allowed to speak freely in her interviews. [Via No Quarter.] [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Oct 22, 2007 - 87 comments

PM John Howard denies Iraq-oil link
posted by andihazelwood on Jul 5, 2007 - 37 comments

Now they tell us. Neocon hindsight is 20/20. War architect Richard Perle on invading Iraq, 2002: "We have no time to lose, and I think the president understands that and it's probably taken too long already, but I don't think it'll be much longer... Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder.... Now, it isn't going to be over in 24 hours, but it isn't going to be months either." Four years later: "If I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies'... Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."
posted by digaman on Nov 3, 2006 - 105 comments

Last March, the White House put numerous Iraqi government documents online, hoping to "leverage the internet" to find evidence of Saddam's nuclear potential. After questioning from the New York Times this week, the site has now been shut down, as it has been revealed that the Bush administration, by publishing the information, may have publicly published detailed information on how to build atomic weapons. Right-wing bloggers, many of whom have been discussing the documents all year, have seen the sunny side of the news, claiming the real issue of the potential distribution of nuclear plans (which were dated pre-1991) is the "proof Saddam had a nuclear program."
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Nov 3, 2006 - 55 comments

What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA: She was the chief of operations of the CIA's Joint Task Force on Iraq, in charge of gathering information on Iraq's supposed WMD programs, according to a new article in The Nation based on David Corn and Michael Isikoff's new book, Hubris. On his weblog, David Corn says, "She was an undercover officer in charge of running critical covert operations." Also, in the summer of 2001, "word came down from the brass: We're ramping up on Iraq."
posted by kirkaracha on Sep 5, 2006 - 31 comments

Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.

So much for Karl Rove's claim that it's wrong to think of U.S. voters as [uninformed and gullible.] Or "There are practitioners of politics who hold that voters are dumb, ill-informed and easily misled, that voters can be manipulated by a clever ad or smart line," Rove said. Previously discussed here. Thank you Fox News.

Remember the 2003 study (PDF) by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy (PIPA)? It found that "Fox News viewers were "significantly more likely to have misperceptions" about the Iraq war than all other media consumers." Also the study found that "[t]hose who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions." For instance, of the "three key misperceptions" -- which the study listed as "the beliefs that ... links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found, that WMD have been found in Iraq and that world public opinion approved of the US going to war with Iraq."
posted by ArunK on Aug 6, 2006 - 97 comments

New questions over the death of David Kelly. Previously, on MeFi...[1][2][3][4]. It's a theory, that wants to explain the death of a Weapons Inspector who was involved in little problem concerning Weapons of Mass Destruction. And of course, one cannot link to the Daily Mail without a fondness for the daily-mail-o-matic.
posted by gsb on Jul 23, 2006 - 23 comments

WMDs? Sorry if this is double post or newsfilter, but fox news is claiming that WMDs were found in Iraq. Is it ethical to state as truth that which was been unconfirmed by anyone but one person? Depending on how this pans out, this could continue the shift of approval that started last week.
posted by klik99 on Jun 21, 2006 - 111 comments

Newsfilter: Rumsfeld squirms (via).
posted by bardic on May 4, 2006 - 104 comments

Curveball's motive, CIA officials said, was not to start a war. He simply was seeking a German visa.
You would think that there would be some serious repercussions for "mishandling" intelligence used to start a war.
Then again it's not like this is really news (dated 4/2004)
A different angle previously discussed here on Metafilter
posted by threehundredandsixty on Nov 20, 2005 - 12 comments

With admiration, Scooter Libby.
posted by digaman on Oct 7, 2005 - 40 comments

W. M. D.'s? There's been a lot of talk going on about bacteria infections in Iraq. Is it just common bacteria, or is the ground spoiled?
posted by Balisong on Aug 3, 2005 - 12 comments

It's official: US gives up search for Iraq WMD.
posted by airguitar on Jan 12, 2005 - 231 comments

Check out the stuff WE gave Saddam... In light of the recent news about the prosecution for supplying Saddam w/ WMDs, I was reminded of the Senate report that revealed what we were giving him at the same time. Scroll down to the "U.S. Exports of Biological Materials to Iraq" section. SCARY STUFF!!! - Bacillus Anthracis - Clostridium Botulinum - Brucella Melitensis... Check it out! We even sent him West Nile Fever Virus in 1985.
posted by samlam on Dec 7, 2004 - 15 comments

Hans Blix speaks. (RealPlayer) Hans Blix gave a recent interview with BBC Radio 4 in which he indicates that UN weapons inspectors were on the verge of private interviews with witnesses to the destruction of Iraq's WMD stockpiles shortly before the Bush administration forced inspectors to leave.
"I think that it would have been desireable for us to have more time. . . I think that the Iraqis were actually beginning to try to do cooperation of substance, and they were almost frantic to do so. . ." In his report to the UN on March 7th, 2003 Blix said UN inspectors were on the verge of inspecting a site where much of Iraq's WMDs were disposed and that "The investigation of the destruction site could, in the best case, allow the determination of the number of bombs destroyed at that site." Did the Bush administration "rush to war" in order to prevent the fatal undermining of their justification for war?
posted by insomnia_lj on Oct 12, 2004 - 48 comments

Iraq's WMD capability was essentially destroyed in 1991, according to the report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq.
posted by kirkaracha on Oct 6, 2004 - 28 comments

Banned weapons and WMD parts were shipped out of Iraq after the US forces took power according to the UN. At least thats the best I can make of this article. Does this really say that the UN is upset at us for shipping out of Iraq the exact things they previously said were not in Iraq?
posted by soulhuntre on Sep 7, 2004 - 73 comments

Federally Funded Science Fiction. The CIA announced today that next month's final report on Iraq's weapons program under Saddam Hussein will mostly encompass an analysis of what they believe Iraq would be like through 2008 had Bush not invaded the country. Because when you want accurate, detailed analysis of the future of Iraq's weapons, you turn to the group that got it completely wrong during the present.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Aug 20, 2004 - 27 comments

"There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?'' "Editors at The Washington Post acknowledge they underplayed stories questioning President Bush's claims of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in the months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq." The weblog Lunaville notes that The Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland found that "since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has been especially successful at getting the American media to confirm its political and diplomatic agenda. Media reporting on the President amplified the administration s voice: when Bush said to the country that Americans are vulnerable to WMD in the hands of terrorists, the media effectively magnified those fears." Lawrence Lessig says: "As media becomes more concentrated, competition to curry favor with politicians only increases... Concentrated media and expansive copyright are the perfect storm not just for stifling debate but, increasingly, for weakening democracy as well." Can we make the media democratic?
posted by fold_and_mutilate on Aug 12, 2004 - 17 comments

Making the case for a smoking gun: All the dots connected, and where'd all these dots come from anyway? inthesetimes.com does a great job of pulling from many diverse resources to debunk the "everyone thought he had WMD" arguement, and washingtontimes.com gives an excellent refresher on pre 9/11 Iraq strategy. "The Doctrine of pre-emption becomes inoperable without unimpeachable intelligence accepted by all as the coin of the realm."
posted by y6y6y6 on Aug 4, 2004 - 35 comments

As the verdict of Butler Report into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, draws near in Britain, a senior intelligence source reveals that MI6 took the "rare step" of withdrawing the intelligence assessment that underpinned the claim that Saddam had continued to produce WMD (an admission that such information was fundamentally unreliable), however Blair did not tell the public "that the evidence of WMD was crumbling beneath him". [Watch the Panorama programme in question here for 7 days from 11-7-2004] The Dossier that Lord Hutton declared was not sexed-up (leading to senior BBC resignations), Dr Brian Jones (former head of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Intelligence Staff) says was sexed-up, and details exactly how.
posted by Blue Stone on Jul 12, 2004 - 26 comments

Head US WMD Hunter Gives Up After stepping down, Mr Kay told Reuters news agency that he did not believe there were any large stockpiles of such weapons in existence in Iraq. Mr Kay is being succeeded by former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer. Earlier this month, Mr Duelfer said he believed the chances of finding chemical or biological weapons in Iraq now were close to nil, the BBC's Jon Leyne in Washington reports. Woo-hoo? mrmanley? Time for that Right-wing apology!
posted by Perigee on Jan 23, 2004 - 62 comments

Clinton believes Iraq had weapons of mass destruction: Portugal PM Ok. The Dems and the GOP. But what did Ralph Nader say about WMD?
posted by Postroad on Jan 9, 2004 - 53 comments

France, stung by Libyan WMD deal, admits US policies showing results Ok. Agreed. You don't like Bush. And the French government does not like Bush. But here is what the French now say about Libya: [...] The media, which have long criticised the US war and invasion of Iraq, grudgingly allowed that that conquest had borne fruit in terms of putting pressure on other countries Washington considers "rogue states" or part of an "axis of evil"[...]
posted by Postroad on Dec 22, 2003 - 72 comments

Senators were told Iraqi weapons could hit U.S. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities. If this is true, is he in trouble for saying it?
posted by bas67 on Dec 17, 2003 - 32 comments

President confirms denies confirms link between Iraq and terrorism! " The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction."

In other news, we're at war with Eastasia. We've always been at war with Eastasia... Food rations have jumped by 10%! Doubleplusgood!
posted by insomnia_lj on Sep 23, 2003 - 39 comments

So, how to explain the incorrect allegations about Iraqi WMD? Lies? Self-interest? Ideology? Clerical error?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly on Sep 8, 2003 - 29 comments

Another senior Iraqi officer claims Saddam destroyed all his WMD in 1991. "Iraqi scientists, including those currently held by the U.S. military, have maintained that no new unconventional weapons programs were started in recent years and that all the materials from previous programs were destroyed." Also see Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel's 1995 statements to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
posted by skallas on Aug 1, 2003 - 20 comments

John Dean's analysis of the administrations case for War. "What I found, in critically examining Bush's evidence, is not pretty. The African uranium matter is merely indicative of larger problems, and troubling questions of potential and widespread criminality when taking the nation to war. It appears that not only the Niger uranium hoax, but most everything else that Bush said about Saddam Hussein's weapons was false, fabricated, exaggerated, or phony."
posted by thedailygrowl on Jul 18, 2003 - 73 comments

BBC "Fresh doubts over Iraq's arsenal". CNN "Pentagon: WMD report consistent with U.S. case" Google News lists many other sources on this topic, with varying titles depending on who you read.
posted by CrazyJub on Jun 6, 2003 - 29 comments

Dissent in the ranks. US Secretary of State Colin Powell was under persistent pressure from the Pentagon and White House to include questionable intelligence in his report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction he delivered at the United Nations last February, source: US News and World Report Magazine. According to the report, the draft contained such questionable material that Powell lost his temper, throwing several pages in the air and declaring, "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit."
posted by CrazyJub on May 31, 2003 - 76 comments

U.S. Insiders Say Iraq Intel Deliberately Skewed "Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorist operations, said he knew of serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up "fraudulent" intelligence, "a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi." The marines are looking, but they can't find a damn thing. So... were Bush and company played by the INC, or were the American people played by Team Bush?
posted by owillis on May 30, 2003 - 21 comments

U.S. says Iraq may have junked toxic arms Thus spake Rummy in a speech. We know they have them. If we can not find them it is because they got rid of them. But that still means they had them at one time, right? Question: what are those top scientists and Bath party members telling their captors wherever they are being held for questioning? Or is too important to reveal too.
posted by Postroad on May 28, 2003 - 64 comments

Missing WMDs found ... buried in a field near Maryland
posted by magullo on May 28, 2003 - 43 comments

Where did those chemical and biological weapons come from?
”According to the December declaration, treated with much derision from the Bush administration, U.S. and Western companies played a key role in building Hussein's war machine. The 1,200-page document contains a list of Western corporations and countries -- as well as individuals -- that exported chemical and biological materials to Iraq in the past two decades.”

I’ve always been surprised that this type of report doesn’t get more attention. During the UN hearings I half expected the Administration to level with the world and simply say: ”We know they have the stuff because we sold it to them.”
posted by peebo on Mar 26, 2003 - 32 comments

'Huge' Chemical Weapons Plant Found in Iraq - and Hans Blix is somewhere redfaced...
posted by Macboy on Mar 23, 2003 - 99 comments

Remember that whole drone "cover-up"? Here's the plane. The prototype of Iraq's smoking gun WMD threat. Constructed of balsa wood and duct tape, it says Allahu Akbar (God is great) on the side. And, well, they were probably half right. While it's not really a gun, it probably does smoke -- it uses lawn-mower-style two-stroke engines. Washington Post story here.
posted by condour75 on Mar 13, 2003 - 38 comments

Is Hans Blix attempting to cover up the discovery of an undeclared Iraqi drone, recently discovered by U.N. inspectors? A 173 page declassified report released, after Blix's report to the Security Council on Friday, tells of a remotely piloted drone with a wingspan of 7.45m, that Iraq did not declare, and that Blix failed to mention in his oral presentation. Why would he leave this out of this presentation?
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood on Mar 8, 2003 - 144 comments

If Saddam Hussein were to use chemical/biological weapons in an Iraq conflict, how safe would soldiers in the field be? The Department of the Defense says "no problem", but some of the men on the ground seem to believe otherwise. The gear the soldiers will use to protect themselves and their water supply appears to be old, prone to failure while the training received in the usage of these tools looks inadequate. It could be the return of "Gulf War Syndrome" (PDF).
posted by owillis on Feb 20, 2003 - 19 comments

What if Saddam does have these weapons of mass-destruction? Hussein's senior bodyguard has fled to Israel with details of Iraq's secret arsenal. His revelations have supported US President George W. Bush's claim there is enough evidence from UN inspectors to justify going to war.
posted by Macboy on Feb 4, 2003 - 49 comments

A list of articles by former weapons inspector Richard Spertzel on current inspections. Also former weapons inspector Bill Tierney says Saddam has nukes and the French sabotaged U.N. WMD searches.
posted by Ron on Jan 29, 2003 - 25 comments

UN finds no banned weapons - that's a relief. Now the only "weapons of mass destruction" in the current debacle are owned by the US i.e. 27 stealth bombers, capable of completely destroying much of the world in just a few seconds.
posted by scotty on Dec 26, 2002 - 47 comments

U.N. passes Iraq resolution on weapons inspections "The resolution passed unanimously, after Secretary-General Kofi Annan joined the assembled delegates in the Security Council chamber." I really hope Iraq takes a new approach, and actually genuinely disarms. Next year will be so much more pleasant.
posted by MidasMulligan on Nov 8, 2002 - 27 comments

Down the memory hole! An eye-opening comparison of how the various media outlets reported the removal of U.N. inspectors from Iraq back in the day (1998) with today (2002, and itchin' to fight).
posted by Dirjy on Oct 25, 2002 - 16 comments

Two ways to destroy Chemical Weapons. When UNSCOM was in Iraq they destroyed in place tons of chemical weapons: VX, Sarin. and Mustard gas were burned out in the open. The effort to destroy the United States' aged chemical arsenal includes building special incinerators costing over 1.5 Billion Dollars each. If we didn't need them in Iraq why do we need them here? What's the difference? And now that the incinerators are ready for testing why is the goverment switching from burning to neutralization with water at three sites? Billion Dollar toilet seats?
posted by Mack Twain on Sep 27, 2002 - 7 comments

This may not make as effective a sales pitch as "weapons of mass destruction," but with two oil men in office, it can't be ignored as a possible ulterior motive to war in Iraq. Am I a cynic or should we be asking if this "preemptive" war is really about what they are saying it's about?
posted by karlcleveland on Sep 23, 2002 - 7 comments

US threat to [wait for it..] stop Iraq inspections
Ri-iiiight. What was that about giving clear and determined leadership to the world? About the need for "Mr Saddam Hussein ... to let inspectors back in his country to show us that he is not developing weapons of mass destruction"? That man is making a fool of his government, policies and his own people. What next?
posted by dash_slot- on Sep 19, 2002 - 98 comments

You Call That Evidence? Op-Ed from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists about the so-called evidence for the administration's claim that Iraq is "moving very near a nuclear weapon capability." Too bad something that at least seems to be approaching the truth will have nothing to do with whether we go to war or not.
posted by elgoose on Sep 11, 2002 - 51 comments