Changing the reasons for war once again

flavio

Banned
Now that we've spent all that money and killed all those people it's reassuring to know that it's still hard to get a clear idea of why we did it.



(05-30) 09:17 PDT BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) --

European critics of the Iraq war expressed shock Friday at published remarks by a senior U.S. official playing down Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as the reason for the conflict.

In an interview in the next issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited "bureaucratic reasons" for focusing on Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal and said a "huge" reason for the war was to enable Washington to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia.

"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying.

He said one reason for going to war against Iraq that was "almost unnoticed but huge" was the need to maintain American forces in Saudi Arabia as long as Saddam was in power.

Those troops were sent to Saudi Arabia to protect the desert kingdom against Saddam, whose forces invaded Kuwait in 1991, but their presence in the country that houses Islam's holiest sites enraged Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden.

Within two weeks of the fall of Baghdad, the United States announced it was removing most of its 5,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and would set up its main regional command center in Qatar.

However, those goals were not spelled out publicly as the United States sought to build international support for the war. Instead, the Bush administration focused on Saddam's failure to dismantle chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

The failure of U.S. forces to locate extensive weapons stocks has raised doubts in a skeptical Europe whether Iraq represented a global security threat.

Wolfowitz's comments followed a statement by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who suggested this week that Saddam might have destroyed his banned weapons before the war began.

On Friday, the commander of U.S. Marines in Iraq said he was surprised that extensive searches have failed to discover any of the chemical weapons that U.S. intelligence had indicated were supplied to front line Iraqi forces at the outset of the war.

"Believe me, it's not for lack of trying," Lt. Gen. James Conway told reporters. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."

The remarks by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld revived the controversy over the war as President Bush left for a European tour in which he hopes to put aside the bitterness over the war, which threatened the trans-Atlantic partnership.

In Denmark, whose government supported the war, opposition parties demanded to know whether Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen misled the public about the extent of Saddam's weapons threat.

"It was not what the Danish prime minister said when he advocated support for the war," Jeppe Kofod, the Social Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, said in response to Wolfowitz's comments. "Those who went to war now have a big problem explaining it."

Former Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen said he was shocked by Wolfowitz's claim. "It leaves the world with one question: What should we believe?" he told The Associated Press.

In Germany, where the war was widely unpopular, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeiting newspaper said the comments about Iraqi weapons showed that America is losing the battle for credibility.

"The charge of deception is inescapable," the newspaper said Friday.

In London, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who quit as leader of the House of Commons to protest the war, said he doubted Iraq had any such weapons.

"The war was sold on the basis of what was described as a pre-emptive strike, 'Hit Saddam before he hits us,' " Cook told British Broadcasting Corp. "It is now quite clear that Saddam did not have anything with which to hit us in the first place."

During a visit to Poland, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday he has "absolutely no doubt" that concrete evidence will be found of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

"Have a little patience," Blair told reporters.

Wolfowitz was in Singapore, where he is due to speak Saturday at the Asia Security Conference of military chiefs and defense ministers from Asian and key Western powers.

He told reporters at the conference that the United States will reorganize its forces worldwide to confront the threat of terrorism.

"We are in the process of taking a fundamental look at our military posture worldwide, including in the United States," Wolfowitz said. "We're facing a very different threat than any one we've faced historically."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/05/30/international1153EDT0556.DTL
 
So...He admits that they sold us a lie and people died because of it.....interesting....:eek6:

* pretends to be surprised....
 
:eek2:




ok. i failed. not even slightly surprised. if somebody said the war was about pretzels, i wouldn't be surprised either :D
 
i told you guys, the excuse for a war they told is evolving now, it won't take long til everybody admits it was all about oil ;)

Even Gonz is starting to believe that, even thou he says "i never said oil was not part of the game" as an excuse :p
 
OK we're sorry liberals, we were wrong. Let us apologize and put Saddam back in power and it will be all fixed.
 
Luis G said:
i told you guys, the excuse for a war they told is evolving now, it won't take long til everybody admits it was all about oil

Even Gonz is starting to believe that, even thou he says "i never said oil was not part of the game" as an excuse

Oh come on. It was definitely NOT all about oil. You can search my posts here, I did say that oil played a part in it, but as I say now, it's not a big part.
 
Wait for what? As soon as the oil starts flowing from Iraq? Or are you trying to imply that we are going to make this occupation permenant? I honestly don't get it, what are we waiting for, lay it out here for us.
 
Jeslek said:
OK we're sorry liberals, we were wrong. Let us apologize and put Saddam back in power and it will be all fixed.

While you're at it could you bring all the people back from the dead and un-spend all those millions too? Thanx.
 
Wait, you mean people in politics weren't completely honest about their motives from the outset!?!

C'mon people, use your brains. When have politicians ever been perfectly honest about the real reasons for their actions? It's a fact of life that what they tell us is not the God's honest truth.

That being said, I'm glad to see that the US is beginning to tell the story that I've told all along, that they're beginning to share the deeper reasons behind the war. What they are saying is starting to look a lot like the explanations I provided months ago, that were available for anyone who could do a little thinking for themselves. IMO, it makes them more credible to me. Sure, others might think it makes them less credible, but of course those people still think it was about the oil and contracts. :nono:
 
i'm quite happy to be shown the proper, honest, legal justification for war but my government could not be bothered to bring me this and would rather lie to me. i can't say i'm overly surprised but it makes me sad and angry that the public cannot be deemed worthy enough to be told and decide for themselves.

every 5 years i get worthy enough, i hope they remember that.
 
Sorry oli but to ask me to fight and die for you when you don't want to tell me the truth as to why is just plain wrong....
 
PuterTutor said:
Wait for what? As soon as the oil starts flowing from Iraq? Or are you trying to imply that we are going to make this occupation permenant? I honestly don't get it, what are we waiting for, lay it out here for us.

wait for the new reasons ;)
 
Squiggy said:
Sorry oli but to ask me to fight and die for you when you don't want to tell me the truth as to why is just plain wrong....
I'm not saying that it is right (in this case, perhaps it can be in some, though I hate to generalize anything like that), only that it happens. It has happened in the past. I'm sure there are plenty of "liberal" events that have taken place which were, essentially, lies as well. Half the bills we might vote on (if we could) are probably based on lies, yet that doesn't out of necessity detract from the correctness of passing that bill.

Maybe I'm just pessimistic, or perhaps just a realist, for recognizing that never in history has our government really been truthful with us. Now is no different. Do you detest everything our country has done in the past simply because you doubt the reasons supplied?

Look, I'm all for governments being honest. I wish it were so. I hope it becomes so. But it isn't so. That doesn't detract from the war against Iraq being the right thing to do.

My reasons for supporting the war have always been based on my own assessment of the ME situation, though that assessment was certainly made using the only data I had available... data which without doubt could have been false. Though the fact that the government is now telling the story a bit more in line with my assessment only reasures me that my assessment was based on logical data, and that my assessment was correct: going to war was the right thing.

Nothing a politician says now can take that away, and nothing makes my longstanding opinion any less reasonable, logical, or correct.
 
outside looking in said:
Though the fact that the government is now telling the story a bit more in line with my assessment only reasures me that my assessment was based on logical data, and that my assessment was correct: going to war was the right thing.

It is also becoming increasngly obvious that the majority of pro-war folk were being duped into supporting the war based on bogus reasons and lies. Which has been my assessment all along.
 
Pentagon challenges Vanity Fair report

From Jamie McIntyre
CNN
Friday, May 30, 2003 Posted: 10:22 PM EDT (0222 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Vanity Fair article "misrepresents" statements made by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz about U.S. justification for the invasion of Iraq, Pentagon officials said.

The quotes in the article were shortened and thus out of context, one said.

The article by Sam Tanenhaus quoted Wolfowitz as saying, "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

The Pentagon says a full reading of the transcript of the telephone interview Wolfowitz gave the reporter May 9 does not support that interpretation of the deputy secretary's comments.

"Vanity Fair only used a portion of the deputy secretary's quote," the source said. "Their omission completely misrepresents what he was saying. The complete quote makes clear that there were multiple reasons for the use of military forces against Iraq."

According to a tape recording made by the Pentagon, the actual quote is, "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason."

After a brief pause to take another phone call, Wolfowitz continues, "There have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually, I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one, which is the connection between the first two."

A news release promoting the Vanity Fair article said Wolfowitz was contradicting the Bush administration by saying that weapons of mass destruction had never been the most compelling justification for invading Iraq.

The distinction between the two versions is important because one of the main premises in the debate for the invasion of Iraq was a need to rid Saddam Hussein's regime of weapons of mass destruction. So far, U.S. forces have found no such weapons.

The Pentagon's transcript of the interview is posted on its Web site, www.defenselink.mil.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/05/30/wolfowitz.vanity.fair/index.html
 
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