Unbeliever

I wonder if anyone is surprised by this. I'm only surprised that Blix is talking about it.

Fake papers backed war: Blix

Zar

Good point. I would not have guessed that Blix would take such an aggressive stance whether he thought it to be true or not. He's sticking his neck out here. I mean, some journalists throughout the world have already pointed these problems out, but now we have someone who has a unique visibility saying the same thing. Since there is so much at risk if he -- a top voice in this whole affair -- is wrong, he brings a lot of people down with him if he is. I must assume he has a great deal of confidence that the U.S. will not make any significant finds to discredit him.

Not that this should matter. Fake or misleading documents ought to be of concern regardless. But politically, I doubt people will see this nuance.

Something strikes me as I say this. Isn't it sad to think of basic principles of law and justice as a mere "nuance" in our times?

S2Focus

The Bush administration's conduct regarding the forged Niger nuclear documents was absolutely outrageous.

Last September, the Bush admin. used those forged documents to convince several undecided Democratic senators to vote in favor of a resolution authorizing Bush to wage war on Iraq. Then in January of this year, Bush cited the Niger nuclear documents in his State of the Union address. Not long after that, Colin Powell cited the same documents when he tried to convince the UN Security Council that Iraq was attempting to develop nuclear weapons.

But in early March, when the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) finally obtained copies of the Niger documents from the USA (BTW, it took the IAEA *months* to pry those documents loose from Bush administration hands), the fraudulent nature of the documents came to light. IAEA investigators, after just a few hours of investigation, were able to determine that the documents were forged. This is something that the Bush administration was unwilling/unable to do during the many *months* that it had the documents in its possession.

Here's what IAEA investigators had to say about the Niger documents:

"These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking."

"they [the forgeries] could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet."


Now, mind you -- these documents were pivotal in enabling the Bush administration to obtain Congressional authorization to launch the Iraq war. No forged documents -- no Iraq war. It's as simple as that.

What I find amazing about all this is how little the so-called liberal US media has had to say about this matter.

(edited to add the following)
Check out this article written by Seymour Hersh for more details. (FYI, Seymour Hersh is the journalist who originally exposed the My Lai massacre.)

Zar

S2Focus,

After re-reading my post, I think it was too ambiguous on how I feel about this. I'm with you. This ought to be one of the biggest scandals in presidential history, and it hinges on a matter of war and peace, no less! It is deeply criminal. Incompetence is not an excuse because it is so egregious a failure.

Thinking outside the box, I wonder if the intelligence community, seeing that they were cornered, let this bomb loose to see if it would bring the president down, and, if not, at least maybe get him off their back? I mean, if intelligence experts are saying it never should have gotten that high up the command chain, one has to wonder what the hell was going on.

But what I was saying, besides this, is that people are too cowed into the Bush way of thinking and it astonishes me. I get the sense that people seem to be waiting for the retroactive justification for this war (finding evidence of WMDs somewhere, somehow) to fail before they unleash their full fury. This is why I was impressed that Blix brought this up now. His posture is like, "What the hell? Why aren't we talking about this?"

Indeed.

Godless Dave

You guys really hate America don't you? Don't you remember 9/11?
</Republican bullshit>

Optional

The whole episode of the forged papers depresses me. It seems to me there are only two possibilities of explanation: a) my government and security apparatus really is THAT incopetent at spotting forgeries, or b) my government and security apparatus really is THAT incompetent at creating forgeries.

Either way, it don't look good.

-me

MortalWombat

You forgot another possibility:

C) They spotted the forgery, but chose to present it as evidence anyway.

Godless Dave

Even more depressing: the American press barely covered it, and most of the American people seem to believe everything the White House says without question.

Hubble head

I would put it on a level ABOVE eavesdropping on the Democratic Party HQ if the top admin people knew it was fake. I can't expect Bush to know what these things look like- he'll say he was duped. If heads roll, I doubt his would be one without more proof he knew it was a fake from day one.

20 years from now we'll be glued to our respective video screens to hear the "Bush- Crawford tapes"...I can hear them now

BUSH:Fake? Who gives a damn? No one will know until its too late and Saddam is gone-by then we'll be hero's and untouchable.
RUMMY: Well, we can make up more stuff if we want-
POWELL: (interupting) Fake? What was fake?
CONDI: Here's your coffee boys. Don't work too late.
PERLE: (chewing on pen) Kill Kill Kill Kill Kill
WOLFOWITZ: (graciously) Absolutely right you are again Mr President, - and how's the tax cut coming, I need to stimulate the economy by hiring a bunch of mzcans to build some tennis courts on my summer home.
ALL: (Laughter)
CARLUCCI, SHULTZ, and FALWELL: (peeking in) You guys have our checks ready yet?
CHENEY: George, don't forget that we'll be the most feared and powerful men in the world so no one will mess with us again.
BUSH: Yee-haw! God bless me!

OK, dumb but you get the picture.

peacenik

I don't know why these remarks are considered so controversial. He is simply stating the undeniable facts.

See this CNN link:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/14/sprj.irq.documents/

See also literally thousands of links on this Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...=Google+Search