OK. The Iowa Caucuses are behind us. Sen. John Kerry
(D-Mekong Delta) made one hopefully truthful declaration
last night, he bellowed "I have just begun to fight!"
Well, the LNS hopes so...Kerry, who we had great
expectations for early in this process, failed our
country and the world when a) he voted for the
_resident's Iraq war resolution, and b) he refused to
denounce the _resident's sham pretexts for war -- even after the fact,
when their utter absurdity had been verified. He has
not fought this illegitimate, incompetent and corrupt
cabal so far, so far he has only really fought Howard Dean
(D-Jeffords), who was giving voice to the outrage that
Kerry could have given voice to...Instead, for most of
the last few months, Kerry has stayed within the
precincts of Equivocation...However, Rand Beers (who
resigned from the National Security Council in protest
of the _resident's failed leadership in
counter-terrorism), former Ambassador Joseph Wilson
(who revealed the Niger yellow cake lie) and former
Sen. Max Cleland (an American war hero who was taken
down by black box voting in Georgia) are all in
Kerry's camp, and so there is still hope that Kerry
will remember where he came from...Meanwhile, yes,
Dean deserved better, and yes, he was AMBUSHED in
Iowa, by craven elements within Democractic Party
establishment and perhaps by some "new caucus goers"
who were there for the 2004 version of C.R.E.E.P. Dean
was Rove's preferred candidate before, I think he had
begun to worry Rove recently though. However, Dean's
support must have been less personal than it should
have been, otherwise he would not have ended up with
only 18%. Now the negativity will be turned on Wesley
Clark (D-NATO). Hopefully, Kerry will not participate
in the smearing and the attacks. Hopefully, he will
not stoop to what he stooped to --along with Dick
LoseHeart (D-Misery) -- in Iowa. But sadly, he
probably will...Nevertheless, Clark versus Kerry in
N.H. and beyond cannot be what Rove wants. Although he
would probably prefer an equivocating Kerry to a fiery
Clark. Now we'll see if the real John Kerry is going
to join us...
MEANWHILE, the LNS, like Wesley Clark, is going to
stay focused on the task at hand...cleansing the body
politic of this illegitimate, corrupt and incompetent
regime...Here is Ray McGovern's primer for the
SOTU...and, of course, the propapunditgandists will
not provide this context for tonight's speech, they
will follow the lead of their handlers at the White
House and the RNC and yes, of course, their own
corporate overlords -- as they desperately try to
rescue this American Mussolini from the electorate
that did not elect him the first time...
Ray McGovern: Iraqi chickens are coming to roost as President Bush's advisors attempt to draft a State of the Union Message without the embarrassing flaws of their last try. With last year's hyperbole -- replete with the knee-slapper about Baghdad's seeking uranium in Africa -- forming part of the backdrop, they have their work cut out for them.
Repudiate the 9/11 coverup and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/7743542.htm
Posted on Mon, Jan. 19, 2004
STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE
Will speech lack hyperbole that 'justified' war?
BY RAY McGOVERN
Iraqi chickens are coming to roost as President Bush's
advisors attempt to draft a State of the Union Message
without the embarrassing flaws of their last try. With
last year's hyperbole -- replete with the knee-slapper
about Baghdad's seeking uranium in Africa -- forming
part of the backdrop, they have their work cut out for
them.
And the facts are not cooperating. Administration
claims originally adduced to justify war could not
withstand close scrutiny, and even the likes of
columnist George Will have disdainfully rejected
''retroactive'' justifications. The gap between
earlier claims about the Iraqi threat and last year's
experience on the ground has become a chasm too wide
to be bridged by rhetorical finesse.
Damaging information
Consider these events and revelations earlier this
month:
• The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
released an exhaustive study, which concluded:
``Administration officials systematically
misrepresented the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction and ballistic missile programs.''
• On the same day, State Secretary Colin Powell
finally conceded that there never had been any
''concrete evidence'' of Iraqi ties to al Qaeda,
contradicting himself on the ''sinister nexus'' that
he conjured up for the U.N. Security Council last
February.
• Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has said that
during his two years in the president's cabinet, ``I
never saw anything I would characterize as evidence of
weapons of mass destruction.''
• But the most damaging revelation came from an
internal Iraqi document -- this time, happily, not a
forged one -- confirming that a high-level order to
destroy all chemical and biological weapons was
carried out in the summer of 1991 (there were no
nuclear weapons). U.S. officials learned of this in
mid-1995 from what intelligence officers would call
''a reliable source with excellent access.''
Everything else he told us has checked out.
Defector par excellence
That source was none other than the person in charge
of Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile
programs: Saddam Hussein's son-in-law Hussein Kamel --
the one who gave the order to destroy those weapons.
Kamel defected in August 1995.
Documentary corroboration that Kamel's order was
carried out surfaced this month in a handwritten
letter obtained by Barton Gelman of The Washington
Post. The letter was written by Hossam Amin, director
of the Iraqi office overseeing U.N. inspectors, five
days after Kamel's defection. It confirms that Iraq
had in fact destroyed its entire inventory of
biological weapons during the summer of 1991, before
U.N. inspectors even knew of their existence.
Does this mean that Kamel's testimony had been known
in Washington and London more than seven years before
Bush's address last January, and that during that
entire period no evidence had come to light poking
holes in the information he provided? Yes.
Well, maybe they didn't tell the president. If that is
true, ''they'' should be fired.
There is, I suppose, a chance that Bush's advisors
missed the information from Kamel's debriefing -- or
forgot it. But Newsweek on Feb. 24, 2003, reported
Kamel's assertion that the weapons of mass destruction
had been destroyed. That was more than three weeks
before our troops were sent into Iraq, ostensibly to
''disarm'' Iraq of those same weapons.
Both Bush and Vice President Cheney have accorded
Kamel fulsome praise as defector par excellence,
emphasizing his revelations about the Iraqi biological
and chemical weapons but not mentioning that Kamel
also said that those same weapons were destroyed at
his order in 1991. This brings the practice of
''cherry-picking'' intelligence information to new
heights -- or lows.
To his credit, Bush did ask the head of his Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, to
investigate how the canard about Iraq's seeking
uranium in Africa got into last year's speech.
According to press reports, Scowcroft has concluded
that it was the work of overzealous functionaries
eager to ''find something affirmative'' to support
claims like those of Cheney that Saddam Hussein had
''reconstituted'' Iraq's nuclear program.
Why not ask Scowcroft to lead an inquiry into which
government officials and members of Congress were
briefed on the full story provided by Kamel, and when?
With 500 of our sons and daughters already killed in
Iraq, we are due no less.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran CIA analyst, is on the
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity's
Steering Group.