Guest fountainhall Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 The former US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, admits in his memoirs that he made a mistake in claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction sites round Baghdad and Tikrit, one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq invasion. Rumsfeld says now: "I made a misstatement." What he meant to say is there were 'suspect sites'. The incident is one of many in the 815-page autobiography, Known and Unknown, in which he seeks to revise the history of the Bush administration on issues ranging from Iraq to the Guantánamo detention centre . . . He recounts how during the Iraq invasion in 2003 he was asked on a news programme about WMD. He says he normally tried to be reserved and precise on intelligence matters but in this instance he made a mistake. "Recalling the CIA's designation of various 'suspect' WMD sites in Iraq, I replied: 'We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.' My words have been quoted many times by critics of the war as an example of how the Bush administration misled the public." Critics of the war, he writes, accused the Bush administration of lying, compiling "a small string of comments – ill-chosen or otherwise deficient – to try to depict the administration as purposefully misrepresenting the intelligence." But, Rumsfeld says: "While I made a few misstatements – in particular the one mentioned above – they were not common and certainly not characteristic. Other senior administration officials also did a reasonably good job of representing the intelligence community's assessments accurately in their public comments about Iraqi WMD, despite some occasionally imperfect formulations." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/08/donald-rumsfeld-book-misstatements-wmd “Reasonably good job . . . despite some occasionally imperfect formulations.” Telling words from a man who was normally so precise with his choice of words, even though they sometimes made little sense to anyone else. And appalling, considering they helped make a case for a disastrous war that the US will be paying for for a long time to come. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Ah, Rumsfeld, the man who (1) sometimes didn't know what he didn't know, (2) knew that what he knew wasn't all there was to know, and (3) pondered daily if he would knew he didn't know enough to realize what he didn't know. And, in the end, it turns out he only knew one thing: diddley (American slang for nothing or not much at all). Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz, the right-wing ilk that coaxed Bushie Jr. into the lovely Iraq expedition, the lovely resort at Guantanamo, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fountainhall Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 "I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know." "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." "If I know the answer I'll tell you the answer, and if I don't, I'll just respond, cleverly." "We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead." "Oh, Lord. I didn't mean to say anything quotable." He said it! And so many still believed him! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest xiandarkthorne Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Gosh! And here I was thinking they'd put him and his good friend, the Bushcher of Baghdad, away for war crimes already! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Thor69 Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 I'd love to see Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld tried as war criminals. But in reality it would never happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest GaySacGuy Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 I'd love to see Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld tried as war criminals. But in reality it would never happen. Couldn't agree more!! But need to add a few, including Bush's attorney Gonzalez who tried to get Ashcroft sign papers in his hospital bed. I personally think that Rumsfeld is an idiot!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fountainhall Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 Whilst on the subject, the biggest one at large in my view is Kissinger. In a famous expression of his contempt for democracy, Kissinger once observed that he saw no reason why a certain country should be allowed to "go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people." http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/CaseAgainst1_Hitchens.html This quote is from a memorable couple of articles Christopher Hitchens wrote for Harpers Magazine in 2001. It refers to Chile where Salvadore Allende had just won the General Election in 1970. As Hitchens points out, "the very name of Allende was anathema to the extreme right in Chile, to certain powerful corporations (notably ITT, PepsiCola and the Chase Manhattan Bank) that did business in Chile and the United States, and to the CIA." And we all know what happened thereafter. Fast forward to 1975. Kissinger conveniently looked the other way as Pakistan set about the invasion of Bangladesh and the mass murder of what has variously been estimated at between 500,000 and 3 million followers of its popularly elected leader, Sheik Mujibur Rahman. Add to that up to 10 million Hindus who were forced to seek refuge in India. The Sheik and most of his family were soon assassinated. Pakistan had been forced to give up Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) some years earlier after the Sheik had led a popular revolution. Pakistan felt it was 'owed' a favour by Kissinger because it had helped set up the famous Nixon visit to China. Most commentators agree that Pakistan's action against its eastern half was undertaken with the tacit approval of Kissinger. In December of that same year, Indonesia invaded East Timor, going on to murder around 200,000 people, mostly civilians. Who had been in Jakarta just the day before? Henry, of course! Who conveniently airbrushed this fact from his memoirs? Oh dear, Henry – you got caught out on that later, didn’t you? And who was Indonesia’s biggest supplier of military hardware? Henry’s employer, the United States. Once again, there is a mounting volume of evidence to show that Kissinger had approved the use of force. There are more, and that’s even before we hit the obvious ‘big’ ones - Vietnam and Cambodia. As journalist and author William Shawcross states in the title of his book on the tragedy of Cambodia, Sideshow*, Cambodia was a mere sideshow to the main event in Vietnam for Kissinger and his buddy Richard Nixon. I don’t know how many Cambodians were killed as a direct result of the bombings and the undeclared war. But we all know it led to the triumph of the Khmer Rouge and the millions who then died in the Killing Fields. That man surely has powerful friends keeping him away from the clutches of the War Crimes Tribunal. * Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and The Destruction of Cambodia William Shawcross Simon & Schuster Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TotallyOz Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 I personally think that Rumsfeld is an idiot!!!! I don't think he is an idiot. I think he is evil. I think Bush is an idiot. I don't think he is evil. I don't think Bush has the IQ to rise to the level of even. Cheney is scum and I hope one day they are all tried as war criminals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 I don't think he is an idiot. I think he is evil. I think Bush is an idiot. I don't think he is evil. I don't think Bush has the IQ to rise to the level of even. I'd generally agree with that analysis. Given the education level GW attained, it's almost impossible to argue that he was intellectually stupid at least back when he was younger; however, he either has the innate analytical skills of a snail or drugs/booze truly damaged a lot of his brain cells. I believe he actually thought he was doing the right thing and had no clue that Cheney and Wolfowitz were leading him down the garden path. I don't think he even realizes it now (again, due to some unknown issue with how he thinks or can't think). As to war criminals or any type of criminal charges, it just isn't going to happen so no sense going there. If somebody came up with irrefutable proof that they intentionally lied to Congress about the wmd's, maybe; otherwise, not a chance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TotallyOz Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 As to war criminals or any type of criminal charges, it just isn't going to happen so no sense going there. If somebody came up with irrefutable proof that they intentionally lied to Congress about the wmd's, maybe; otherwise, not a chance. Do you honestly think that even then they would be tried for anything? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 Do you honestly think that even then they would be tried for anything? Yes, I do. But first we gotta find the irrefutable truth that they knowingly lied about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fountainhall Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Well! Well! Well! Now it is Colin Powell going back in time - but this time to correct the record. Britain's Guardian newspaper has an article with information that Powell has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein's bio-weapons capability. Responding to the Guardian's revelation that the source, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi or "Curveball" as his US and German handlers called him, admitted fabricating evidence of Iraq's secret biological weapons programme, Powell said that questions should be put to the US agencies involved in compiling the case for war. In particular he singled out the CIA and the Defence Intelligence Agency Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
