This is from the September 14, 2003 program of
Meet The Press, hosted by Tim Russert.
(Link goes to a complete very incomplete transcript.)
Cheney On The Missing WMD (Small – 10 MB)
This is from the September 14, 2003 program of
Meet The Press, hosted by Tim Russert.
(Link goes to a complete very incomplete transcript.)
I also have this footage edited into smaller clips, organized by subject, that I’m in the process of uploading right now.
Cheney On Meet The Press – 1 of 2 (Small – 55 MB)
Cheney On Meet The Press – 2 of 2 (Small – 49 MB)
It’s Official – Saddam Was Not an Imminent Threat
By Clare Short (Yes the Clare Short who resigned as British international development secretary in May)
We must not allow the barrage of biased comment to mislead us into a fudged conclusion that it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. And we must focus both on the pressures that were placed on Dr Kelly and the wider question of how we got to war in Iraq.
The inquiry has already established beyond doubt that, despite government briefing that Dr Kelly was a medium-level official of little significance, he was in fact one of the world’s leading experts on WMD in Iraq. It is also clear that Dr Kelly chose to brief three BBC journalists – and presumably others – to the effect that the 45-minute warning of the possible use of WMD was an exaggeration. He said to the Newsnight reporter Susan Watts, as well as to Gilligan that Campbell and the Downing Street press operation were responsible for exerting pressure to hype up the danger. The inquiry is exploring the reality of that claim. But it is already clear that Dr Kelly made it, to Gilligan and Watts.
The BBC would have been grossly irresponsible if it had failed to bring such a report – from such an eminent source – to public attention. It is a delicious irony that Alastair Campbell castigates the BBC for relying on one very eminent source for this report … and yet the 45-minute claim itself came from only one source…
I agree completely with Jonathan Powell’s conclusion. But it follows from this that there was no need to truncate Dr Blix’s inspection process and to divide the security council in order to get to war by a preordained date.
If there was no imminent threat, then Dr Blix could have been given the time he required. He may well have succeeded in ending all Iraq’s WMD programmes – just as he succeeded in dismantling 60-plus ballistic missiles. Then sanctions could have been lifted and a concentrated effort made to help the people of Iraq end the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein – just as we did with Milosevic in Serbia.
Or if Blix had failed, we would have been in the position President Chirac described on March 10, when the issue would have come back to the security council. And in Chirac’s view, this would have meant UN authorisation of military action.
The tragedy of all this is that if we had followed Jonathan Powell’s conclusion, and the UK had used its friendship with the US to keep the world united on a UN route, then, even if it had come to war, a united international community under a UN mandate would almost certainly have made a better job of supporting Iraq’s reconstruction.
The Crime and the Cover-Up
By William Rivers Pitt for t r u t h o u t.
The simple fact is that America went to war in Iraq because George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and virtually every other public face within this administration vowed that Iraq had vast stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. America went to war because these people vowed that Iraq had direct connections to al Qaeda, and by inference to the attacks of September 11.
“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,” said Bush on March 17, 2003.
“We know now that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,” said Cheney on August 26, 2002.
“There is no doubt” that Saddam Hussein ”has chemical weapons stocks,” said Powell to FOX News on September 8, 2002.
“Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda,” said Bush in his State of the Union address. On September 26, 2002, Don Rumsfeld laid the groundwork for Bush’s statement by claiming that America had “bulletproof” evidence of Iraqi involvement with al Qaeda.
These public statements, augmented by hundreds more in the same vein, stoked fears within an already shellshocked American populace that Iraqi nuclear weapons and anthrax would come raining out of the sky at any moment, unless something was done. This same information was delivered in dire tones to Congress, which voted for war on Iraq based almost exclusively on the testimony of CIA Director George Tenet.
None of it was true. Not one ounce of chemical, biological or nuclear weaponry has been found in Iraq in the 82 days since “hostilities ceased” on May 1, 2003. Not one ounce of chemical, biological or nuclear weaponry has been found in Iraq in the 124 days since the shooting in Iraq officially started on March 19, 2003. Not one ounce of chemical, biological or nuclear weaponry has been found in Iraq in the 230 days since the UNMOVIC weapons inspections began in Iraq in late November of 2002. No proof whatsoever of Iraqi connections to al Qaeda has been established.
I’ll be putting up the video for this later — hopefully this week. I’m still backed up through most of the summer on these — but I am catching up and should have video and transcripts of every show on it’s way to you. I’m trying to get a system in place so I can turn these around quicker.
Meet the Press – July 27, 2003
This is from NBC News – Meet the Press on July 27, 2003.
MR. RUSSERT: John Deutsche, former director of the CIA, testified before Congress on Thursday and said something that was quite striking, and I
This is an interview with Ambassador Joseph Wilson on Meet the Press from July 6, 2003.
Joseph Wilson On The Shrub’s Inaccurate WMD Intelligence (Small – 22 MB)
This is from the July 24, 2003 program.
Daily Show On The Shrub’s Latest WMD Stragegy (Small – 5 MB)
Actual grab from presidential website (below):
Not an actual grab from the presidential website (below):
The Daily Show (The best news on television.)
Here’s an interview with Ambassador Joseph Wilson — the guy that’s been touring the circuit explaining how he discovered the Niger Uranium WMD situation couldn’t have happened as originally reported.
This is from the July 24, 2003 show.
This is a long interview, so I’ve made it available in its entirety and in two parts.
Joseph Wilson On Daily Show – Part 1 of 2 (Small – 12 MB)
Joseph Wilson On Daily Show – Part 2 of 2 (Small – 10 MB)
Joseph Wilson On Daily Show (Complete) (Small – 21 MB)
The Daily Show (The best news on television.)
Group: Cheney Task Force Eyed on Iraq Oil
By H. Josef Hebert for the Associated Press.
Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq’s oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there, according to documents released Friday by a private watchdog group.
Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, obtained a batch of task force-related Commerce Department papers that included a detailed map of Iraq’s oil fields, terminals and pipelines as well as a list entitled “Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.”
The papers also included a detailed map of oil fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emirates and a list of oil and gas development projects in those two countries.
The papers were dated early March 2001, about two months before the Cheney energy task force completed and announced its report on the administration’s energy needs and future energy agenda.
Judicial Watch obtained the papers as part of a lawsuit by it and the Sierra Club to open to the public information used by the task force in developing President Bush’s energy plan.
Dems to Launch Ad Campaign on Bush, Iraq
By Will Lester for the Associated Press.
Democrats said Sunday they will launch a new television ad in Wisconsin accusing President Bush of misleading Americans on the threat from Iraq.
Republicans warned broadcasters not to air the ad, scheduled to start Monday, calling it “deliberately false and misleading.”
The Democratic National Committee has been raising money through an e-mail campaign that started July 10 to help pay for an ad that sharply questions President Bush’s veracity on Iraq’s weapons.
The ad says: “In his State of the Union address, George W. Bush told us of an imminent threat. … America took him at his word.”
The video shows Bush saying, “Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
The ad continues: “But now we find out it wasn’t true.
“A year earlier, that claim was proven false. The CIA knew it. The State Department knew it. The White House knew it.
“But he told us anyway.”