http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16175

Excerpts:

"Thirty five Representatives have signed House Resolution 260, which demands with specificity that the administration back up its oft-repeated claims about the Iraqi weapons arsenal with evidence and fact. The guts of the Resolution are as follows:

Resolved, That the President is requested to transmit to the House of Representatives not later than 4 days after the date of the adoption of this resolution documents or other materials in the President's possession that provides specific evidence for the following claims relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction:

(1) On August 26, 2002, the Vice President in a speech stated: `Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction . . . What he wants is time, and more time to husband his resources to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons program, and to gain possession of nuclear weapons.'

(2) On September 12, 2002, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, the President stated: `Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.'

(3) On October 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, the President stated: `It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons.'

(4) On January 7, 2003, the Secretary of Defense at a press briefing stated: `There is no doubt in my mind but that they currently have chemical and biological weapons.'

(5) On January 9, 2003, in his daily press briefing, the White House spokesperson stated: 'We know for a fact that there are weapons there Iraq.'

(6) On March 16, 2003, in an appearance on NBC's `Meet The Press', the Vice President stated: `We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. El Baradei frankly is wrong.'

(7) On March 17, 2003, in an Address to the Nation, the President stated: `Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.'

(8) On March 21, 2003, in his daily press briefing the White House spokesperson stated: `Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly.all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.'

(9) On March 24, 2003, in an appearance on CBS's `Face the Nation', the Secretary of Defense stated: `We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established.'

(10) On March 30, 2003, in an appearance on ABC's `This Week', the Secretary of Defense stated: `We know where they are, they are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.'

Back up claims with evidence and fact? That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Another excerpt:

"The scandal that laid Bill Clinton low centered around his lying under oath about sex. The scandal which took down Richard Nixon was certainly more profound, as he was accused of misusing the CIA and FBI to spy on political opponents while paying off people to lie about his actions. Lying under oath and misusing the intelligence community are both serious transgressions, to be sure. The matter of Iraq's weapons program, however, leaves both of these in deep shade.

"George W. Bush and his people used the fear and terror that still roils within the American people in the aftermath of September 11 to fob off an unnerving fiction about a faraway nation, and then used that fiction to justify a war that killed thousands and thousands of people.

"Latter-day justifications about 'liberating' the Iraqi people or demonstrating the strength of America to the world do not obscure this fact. They lied us into a war that, beyond the death toll, served as the greatest Al Qaeda recruiting drive in the history of the world. They lied about a war that cost billions of dollars which could have been better used to bolster America's amazingly substandard anti-terror defenses. They are attempting, in the aftermath, to misuse the CIA by blaming them for all of it. " (emphasis mine)

I think this is worth pondering.

It must have all been a ruse to make Cheney or the Bilderbergers money...

Funny coinkydink about that Halliburton contract, eh?

No fewer than 15 UN resolutions stated that Iraq possessed WMDs.

We know they had chemical weapons and Scud missiles in 1991. Have we seen any evidence of their presence or use since then? If they had them, why didn't they use them when the regime was being attacked and was in danger of being deposed? Why is a captured Iraqi general now saying that he wishes he could accept the U. S. government's $200,000 bounty for finding the weaons, but he can't because they're not there?

Incidentally, there have been far more U. N. resolutions condemning Israel's treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and I don't see anyone attacking them.

In October 1998 Senate Democrats (including Lieberman, Daschle, Kerry and Feinstein) signed a letter urging then President Clinton to attack Iraq over WMDs.

I looked. It was signed by Republicans (McCain, Hutchison) as well, and the letter is only regarding Iraq's lack of cooperation with weapons inspections, not any concrete evidence of WMDs. The letter also calls for "air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites ... if appropriate", not for wholescale takeover and the bombing of civilian neighborhoods.

They DO exist...we MIGHT find them. It's a big friggin place and there are many other things that need to be taken care of.

Yeah, like restoring basic services (still hasn't been done), establishing a government of Iraqis (still hasn't been done) and ... oh, finding Saddam would be nice.

President Bush presented to the American people, and acted upon, the best intelligence that had been presented to him.

That is demonstrably untrue, given that the specific instances he used to present to the American people on the eve of war were bogus, and that inconvenient facts were ignored. Let's just take ONE example, via Cursor:

Concerning the claim by Bush administration officials that the CIA didn't inform the White House that documents alleging Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger may have been forged, Nicholas Kristof says, "I hear something different."

A senior CIA official tells Knight Ridder's Jonathan Landay that the agency warned the White House on March 9, 2002 that the Niger documents may have been bogus. Landay calls that revelation "the strongest evidence to date that pro-war administration officials manipulated, exaggerated or ignored intelligence information in their eagerness to make the case for invading Iraq."

"Senior intelligence officials said that on several occasions after March 2002, the CIA told administration policymakers about its doubts about claims Iraq was seeking uranium," reports the Washington Post. And that "When the State Department on Dec. 19, 2002, [more than one month before the State of the Union address] posted a reference to Iraq not supplying details on its uranium purchases, the CIA raised an objection..."

Is the 65 billion dollar (to date) price tag on this conflict worth the freedom of millions? ... Every life is precious.

Both you and I know that if there were no oil in that country, the Bush administration wouldn't give a crap about those millions and their lack of freedom, just like they ignore the greater millions of oppressed people all over the world.

How about our pal Uzbekistan, a proud member of the "Coalition of the Willing", with a record of human rights abuses a mile long, 600 politically motivated arrests a year, 6500 political prisoners, most of whom are tortured, some of whom have been boiled alive.

Or the lovely Saudi Arabia, a fundamentalist Islamic regime whose official executioner is "proud to do God's work" by beheading several people in one day, or by mutilating them for life. (Why are we friends with them again? Oh yeah, erl.)

Where were we when people were being murdered and oppressed everywhere from East Timor to apartheid South Africa? Why weren't those lives precious enough for a $65 billion war?

I do know that we have killed fewer Iraqis than Saddam.

Oh. Well! That makes it all okay, then.

Just out of curiosity what DO you think the war was about?

Power. Money. Oil. The furthering of the goals of the little would-be oligarchy behind The Project for a New American Century. The establishment of an American foothold in the Middle East as a step toward the imposition of the Bushites' foreign policy goals. And because one man truly believes he was appointed by God for the task. (*shudder*)

STOP PRESS: 2 Former Cabinet Members Say Britain Exaggerated Iraq Claims: "Robin Cook and Clare Short, the two members of Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet who resigned their posts over Iraq, told a House of Commons committee today that Britain made selective use of intelligence to make the case for weapons of ... " Other articles are using the word "tampered".

Oh dear. I wonder if poor Tony Blair will end up losing his job over this. If he did, I suspect it could have somewhat of a domino effect.