“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” Cheney said. “There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.” Zinni, sitting right next to Cheney’s lectern, says he “literally bolted” when he heard the vice president’s comments. “In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD [weapons of mass destruction], through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program.” Rachel Maddow hosts
Hubris: The Selling of the Iraq War, a documentary special,
based on the eponymous book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, that will air Monday, February 18 on MSNBC at 9 p.m.
posted by shivohum
on Feb 18, 2013 -
218 comments
What killed Sgt. Gray? "He survived the war only to die at home. An exploration of his death and his combat unit's activities reveals what can happen to soldiers who feel the freedom -- or the pressure -- to do things in war they can't live with later." -- An American Radioworks documentary.
posted by empath
on Nov 11, 2008 -
29 comments
“You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas." A
Vanity Fair reporter investigates the chain of command that tossed out the Geneva Conventions and instituted coercive interrogation techniques -- some might call them torture or even
war crimes -- in Bush's Global War on Terror. UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo's now-obsolete 81-page memo to the Pentagon in 2003 [available as PDFs
here and here] was crucial, offering a broad range of legal justifications and deniability for disregarding international law in the name of
"self-defense." Others
say that Yoo was just making "a clear point about the limits of Congress to intrude on the executive branch in its exercise of duties as Commander in Chief." [previously
here and
here.]
posted by digaman
on Apr 3, 2008 -
76 comments
In honor of the 5-year anniversary of the Iraq War, PBS'
Frontline presented a fantastic 2- part special on the issue this past Monday and Tuesday. It is now available in it's entirety online along with interview transcripts from senior officials, a video timeline of the war, and battlefield stories from soldiers.
Bush's War
posted by auralcoral
on Mar 26, 2008 -
100 comments
Cheney Clarifies Iraq, Afghanistan on Meet the Press. For the first time in three years, Cheney appears on Meet the Press.
Transcript here. "We’ve never been able to confirm any connection between Iraq and 9/11[,]" but Iraq "...was a state sponsor of terror" and "while they found no stockpiles...[the Duelfer report claimed that] Saddam did in fact have the capability and that as soon as the sanctions were ended—and they were badly eroded—he would be back in business again." "[T]his was the place where, probably, there was a greater prospect of a connection between terrorists on the one hand and a terrorist-sponsoring state and weapons of mass destruction than any place else."
"...if we had to do it again, we would do exactly the same thing..."
posted by shivohum
on Sep 10, 2006 -
71 comments
"I am copying you on this crap since I honestly believe the competitive procurement will never happen." --a multi-billion-dollar no-bid contract to KBR/Halliburton announced only after the fact, Cheney's extensive involvement, the attempted coverup of that involvement, lies, and you.
Embarrassment is not sufficient cause for exemption from the Freedom of Information Act, no matter how much some may wish.
...Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press in September 2003 Cheney stated,
“I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government.”
posted by amberglow
on Jun 15, 2006 -
39 comments
"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," writes former CIA official Paul Pillar, coordinator of U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until 2005, in an article soon to appear in
Foreign Affairs, hardly a radical rag. More confirmation that Seymour Hersh was right about the administration
"cherry-picking" intelligence to justify a foregone conclusion to go to war in Iraq.
posted by digaman
on Feb 10, 2006 -
49 comments
Bush Buzzword Bingo - If you can't stand listening to the president speak, try playing this game. Like the Thanksgiving version, you get a bingo card randomly printed with Bush's favorite buzzwords, bushisms and talking points. First to get five in a row gets bingo, but probably will just end up feeling bad about the world. For more bush/bushism fun, try the
"Give Bush a Brain" game from egreetings. (see if you can beat my high score of 8)
posted by FeldBum
on Dec 18, 2005 -
36 comments
Has the C.I.A. legally killed prisoners? Two years ago, Manadel al-Jamadi, a suspected Iraqi insurgent, walked into a Baghdad interrogation room. He was dead in 45 minutes, his head covered with a plastic bag, shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that led to his asphyxiation. U.S. authorities classified his death a homicide. His CIA interrogator has not been charged with a crime and continues to work for the agency.
President Bush says
"We do not torture." But if that’s true, then why is Vice President Cheney
fighting to exempt CIA interrogators from a torture ban?
And al-Jamadi? His case is stalled in the
Alberto Gonzalez Justice Department, two years after soldiers posed for thumbs-up pictures next to his corpse.
posted by sacre_bleu
on Nov 9, 2005 -
49 comments
"Pull out, pull out", she cried, "Before it's too late!" - Sex sells. Amidst the ongoing PR conflagration - as
newly released imagery of the psychosexual humiliation, by US guards at Abu Ghraib, of imprisoned Iraqis (
a naked Iraqi man on a leash held by a female American soldier, notably) provokes widespread outrage (and the
Red Cross says things are much worse than those pictures show), the BBC reports on informed speculation that the perfect storm of a growing insurgency, political reversals, and a PR debacle will lead to a hasty coalition pullout from Iraq. A frustrated and tense
"Machine Gun Cheney" achieves release, via his wheelbarrel load of 30 guns (including a Thompson), blasting away at a Secret Service gun range. His aim, they say, is very good. But will Cheney bite the bullet and level with the American public about what it will now take for the US to
prevail in Iraq ?
posted by troutfishing
on May 6, 2004 -
153 comments
Watchdog's Bark Judicial Watch, the group that's been suing for access to Cheney's Energy Task Force notes, finally gets some docs, and guess what? Way back in 2001, Cheney, et al, were looking at maps of Iraqi oil fields. Is this the bookend clue, that coupled with Rumsfields 9/12 comments about going after Iraq, starts to shed real light on the administrations foreign policy objectives?
posted by tellmenow
on Jul 18, 2003 -
36 comments
Halliburton Handed No-Bid Iraqi Oil Firefighting Contract You still believe this war is about nothing more then WMD's? I wonder how many other of Bush and Cheney's friends are benefiting from this war? The US government didn't even bother to give other companies a chance to bid for this contract. While on the topic of WMD's you might want to check out
this, about the lack of skepticism when it comes to the media making claims for weapons in Iraq. Remember Fox and their claim of a "HUGE" chemical weapons stash? How are we to get accurate news on this war if the journalist's we rely on are nothing more then puppets for this administration?
posted by tljenson
on Mar 25, 2003 -
40 comments
Bush and Chirac debate Iraq
"I will bomb him in his car;
I will bomb him from afar.
I will bomb him in his house;
I do not like him, he’s a louse.
I’m going to bomb him here and there.
I’m going to bomb him everywhere."
posted by Perigee
on Mar 20, 2003 -
12 comments
U.S. Stops Iraq-Al Qaeda Talk From the Washington Post. Beyond the superficial significance of administration back-tracking, in regards to intelligence there seems to be two key aspects to this story: 1) The article talks about how the CIA was unable to "validate two prominent allegations made by high-ranking administration officials," implying that Bush/Cheney/etc. have been making baseless assumptions about Iraq in their pro-war arguments, and 2) it brings into question whether we know anything at all about Iraq, anyway. What if the same can be said of Hussein's nuclear plans?
posted by risenc
on Sep 10, 2002 -
27 comments
Cheney caught in lie. "According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company."
That would be the same Iraq Cheney/Bush blew to smithereens for his oil buddies.
posted by owillis
on Jun 23, 2001 -
9 comments
