Category Archives: The Shrub War

Fake Nuclear Docs Weren’t Even Good Fakes

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Hey, it’s cool guys. It’s not like innocent people are dying over this or anything…
U.N. Official: Fake Iraq Nuke Papers Were Crude
By Louis Charbonneau for Reuters.

A few hours and a simple internet search was all it took for U.N. inspectors to realize documents backing U.S. and British claims that Iraq had revived its nuclear program were crude fakes, a U.N. official said.
Speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, a senior official from the U.N. nuclear agency who saw the documents offered as evidence that Iraq tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, described one as so badly forged his “jaw dropped.”
“When (U.N. experts) started to look at them, after a few hours of going at it with a critical eye things started to pop out,” the official said, adding a more thorough investigation used up “resources, time and energy we could have devoted elsewhere.”
The United States first made the allegation that Iraq had revived its nuclear program last fall when the CIA warned that Baghdad “could make a nuclear weapon within a year” if it acquired uranium. President Bush found the proof credible enough to add it to his State of the Union speech in January.

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NBC On How The Shrub Administration Miscalculated A Lot Of Things

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Too bad the Shrub doesn’t like to “revisit decisions” (per Bob Woodward – see clip).
Leaders should be able to adjust their strategies to account for the realities of a situation once they become apparent.
Here are some quotes and clips (Small – 2 MB) of Shrub advisors and Dick Cheney from as recently as ten days ago. Could they have been any more wrong?

NBC On Civilian Casualties In Baghdad

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This is stuff I picked up from NBC on Wednesday night when I had my TiVO set to record the blogger piece (which got bumped to Thursday).
These clips aren’t too grisly, but they get the point across: we’re (accidently, inevitably) bombing innocent Iraqi civilians. Damn.
Keep in mind that this is an edited collection of clips made up from clips shown on the NBC Nightly News — this is not an unaltered broadcast. All the clips are in order — I haven’t rearranged them or anything, but I have edited out a lot of yapping that came in-between what I felt were the interesting parts of the video footage.
NBC Nightly News – March 26, 2003 Excerpts (Small – 4 MB)

We’re Taking Iraq And We’re Keeping It — Any Questions?

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In case you were wondering, “yes” the Shrub’s Administration has thrown diplomacy completely out the window.
U.S. Says Will Not Cede Control of Iraq to U.N.

“We didn’t take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant dominating control over how it unfolds in the future,” Powell told a House of Representatives subcommittee.
“We would not support … essentially handing everything over to the U.N. for someone designated by the U.N. to suddenly become in charge of this whole operation,” he added.
“We have picked on a greater obligation — to make sure there is a functioning Iraqi government that is supported by the coalition, the center of gravity remaining with the coalition, military and civilian,” he said.
Powell said the United Nations should, however, have a role in a post-Saddam Iraq, if only because it makes it easier for other countries to contribute to reconstruction costs…
The coalition is the Bush administration’s term for the United States, Britain and the other minor contributors to the invasion of Iraq they launched last week.
The question of the U.N. role has come to the fore in the last few days because of debates in New York on the terms for releasing Iraqi oil money to pay for humanitarian relief.

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