Yesterday's Wash. Post article: a shot across the bow of the Bush Admin.

[Brotherjohn]

Despite the seemingly waning interest in the WMD/hyped intelligence/credibility/LIES issue, the Washington Post is not letting up. Before you say "yeah, but nobody's listening!", keep in mind that it was the WP, and the NYT to a lesser extent, that got this ball rolling and forced other people to listen. While you may think no one is listening anymore, this is perhaps the longest and most comprehensive article on the issue to date. And there's hardly even a mention of the "16 words". I'm sure there will be more fallout from this that is detrimental to the Bush administration. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39500-2003Aug9.html)

Quoting the Post article by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus:
"The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates -- in public and behind the scenes -- made allegations depicting Iraq's nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support. "

That is another way of saying they lied, and more directly than ever names Bush and Cheney. Going further in their pursuit of Cheney, the Post quotes Cheney from August 26th saying: "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," he said. "Among other sources, we've gotten this from firsthand testimony from defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law."

Then the Post, in essence, points out that Cheney was lying, by bringing up (again, what many of us here already know) the actual facts behind that testimony: "That was a reference to Hussein Kamel, who had managed Iraq's special weapons programs before defecting in 1995 to Jordan. But Saddam Hussein lured Kamel back to Iraq, and he was killed in February 1996, so Kamel could not have sourced what U.S. officials "now know." And Kamel's testimony, after defecting, was the reverse of Cheney's description ...Kamel acknowledged efforts to design three different warheads, "but not now, before the Gulf War."

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[bspence]

1. I read this yesterday

It's a great article, and really spells out what's wrong with Bush.

There's another great article in that paper that was about the debate on turning America into an "Empire". Great stuff.

[roberthall10]

2. Better Late than Never

But why could this not have been written six months ago? Because the Post was then caught up in the jingoistic frenzy.

[Brotherjohn]

3. Well, yes and no.

I agree that everyone, including the Post, was soft on the Bush admin leading up to the war. But much of what we now know (such as how much the administration and our intelligence agencies knew about the Niger uranium deal before the war) was not public knowledge then.

Also, these stories are lent much credibility now that we are IN Iraq and it is KNOWN that the place isn't crawling with WMDs.

[carolinayellowdog]

4. Gellman was great on NPR this morning

very specifically calling out Cheney

[MountainLaurel]

5. Loved the timeline

I only hope that this helps to open eyes that the American people, Congress, the United Nations, and the international community were all lied to.